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PRICE, TWENTY-FIVE CENTS. 




BY 



CHARLEJ-JTOKEj'A/AYA^E* 

WYNNE & WAYNE, 

28 South Seventh Street, 

PHILADELPHIA. 




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MRS. LORD’S 


MOONSTONE 


OTHER STORIES 



CHARLES STOKES WAYHE 

// 



Wynne & Wayne, 28 S. Seventh St. 
1888. 

[^All Rights reserved.'] 



\, 


Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1888 
By CHARLES STOKES WAYNE, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 


PRESS OF 

PATTERSON & WHITE, 
PHILAOELPHIA. 


To Q. W. B. 


In appreciative acknowledgement of hie unfailing kindness, this hook is 
dedicated by the Author, 




IN PREPAKATION : 


A SON OF SA TAN, 


A Story of Society. 


CONTENTS 


PAGK 

Mrs. Lord’s Moonstone 7 

How Belford Won . * 83 

A Modern Miracle 93 

A Trap of Cupid 124 

The Wizard’s Jar 


. 133 



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MRS. LORD’S MOONSTONE. 


I. 

IT COMES HOME. 

Mr. John Lord belonged to that class of men 
generically described as matter-of-fact. There 
certainly was very little poetry or sentiment about 
him. He called a spade a spade, and a shovel a 
shovel, and he was never known under any cir- 
cumstances to confound the one with the other. 
Once having made up his mind on a subject he 
was not to be moved by argument. He was clear 
in his convictions and firm in his beliefs, and he 
had little sympathy or patience with those whose 
views did not coincide with his own. Such being 
the case he considered people who believed in the 
materialization of spirits, clairvoyance, theosophy, 
or any other of the occult sciences fit subjects for 
Bloomingdale. It was, therefore, a matter of no 
little surprise when Mr. Lord, at the age of forty, 
married a wife as unlike himself as two persons of 
the same nationality could possibly well be. She 
2 7 


8 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


was eighteen years his junior. She was as grace- 
ful as a sylph, as fair as a houri^ and as full of odd 
fancies and chimerical ideas as the most fantastical 
of poets. It was the first and only sign he had 
ever shown that he Taad anything in common with 
those who were not given up wholly to the realities 
and common-places of life. What he ever could 
have seen in Marian Vallance was a puzzle to his 
cronies, which well-nigh cost him their esteem. 
But that he really loved the girl was beyond ques- 
tion. 1^0 better proof was required than that he 
overlooked her vagaries and smiled good-naturedly 
and without the least shadow of reproof when she 
indulged in some of her wildest flights of fancy. 

Mr. Lord was a man of means. He had enough 
to do in looking after his real estate, collecting his 
rents, and clipping his coupons to keep him busy 
a good part of the time; and, being as fond of 
leisure as the average man of his years, the rest of 
his days he spent in idleness or in the indulgence 
of a taste which, with him, had grown to be little 
short of a mania, — the collecting of geological 
specimens. Geology was his hobby, and, if at 
times he seemed to neglect his wife, it was that he 
might explore this or that belt of country in which 
he felt sure he should find something of scientific 
importance. 

Mr. Lord, though well enough oft in.this world’s 


IT COMES'^HOME. 


9 


goods, was above all an economical man, arid he 
seldom spent a dollar without seeing in return 
something with more than mere beauty to re- 
commend it. Very rarely, indeed, did he buy 
ornaments for his home or jewelry for his wife; 
and it was, therefore, a red-letter day in the old- 
fashioned house in West Washington Place when 
its master presented to its mistress a finger-ring 
that was worth five hundred dollars if it was 
worth a penny. 

The presentation occurred on a warm, sunny 
afternoon in late June. Mr. Lord had been down 
town since ten o’clock, and Mrs. Lord was not 
expecting him until six. She had been lying 
down, as was her wont after luncheon, and was 
dressed in a cool, white gown that fitted loosely 
and comfortably her lithe young figure. She 
could but admit to herself, as she surveyed her 
reflection in the mirror over her dressing-table, 
that she was something more than attractive. 
Her cheeks were flushed from her recent sleep, 
and her light, fluffy, golden hair was in the most 
becoming disorder. 

‘‘Yes,” she said aloud, “Mrs. Lord, you are 
very beautiful, and your husband ought to be 
proud of you.” 

As she spoke she became aware that a face was 
peering in at her from between the curtains that 


10 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


separated her bed-chamber from her boudoir, and 
at the same time she heard a cheery, voice which 
said : 

‘‘ And, Mrs. Lord, permit me to add, your hus- 
band is proud of you.” 

The face, which was full and rather florid, which 
wore a sandy mustache, already streaked with 
gray, and which ended at the top in a shining 
crown, bordered on either side by scant, brown 
locks, was followed into the room by a rather stout 
body and a round and not very long pair of legs, 
— the face, body, and legs being comprised in 
the person of none other than Mr. John Lord? 
himself. 

Mrs. Lord turned towards him with a smile. 
Though unexpected, his return was none the less 
welcome, as was attested by a resounding kiss 
which she administered upon his left cheek. 

“ You dear old fraud,” she exclaimed, ‘‘ What 
on earth brought you home at this hour ?” 

“ Try to guess,” he said, as he threw himself 
into a hospitable-looking wicker chair, and pulled 
his little wife down upon his knee. ‘‘ See if she 
can fathom the mystery.” 

“You are not ill ?” — with some show of alarm 
— “ It is not a sunstroke ?” 

Mr. Lord laughed. 

“ No, my dear,” he replied, “ I am not ill ; and 


IT COMES HOME. 


11 


though a stroke it was, it was not a sunstroke. 
It was a much luckier stroke. In a word, for the 
first, last, and only time in my life, I have taken a 
fiyer, as they call it, in the stock market. I have 
come out a winner, I have bought for you the 
prettiest gem you ever saw ; I have it in my vest 
pocket, and here I am.’’ 

Mrs. Lord kissed her husband again. This 
time on the right cheek, because it was the most 
convenient, and then with nimble fingers she went 
searching for the vest pocket in which reposed her 
present. 

“ Judkins,” Mr. Lord went on, ‘‘ you know 
Judkins — the fellow who rents my South Broad- 
way store — well Judkins is an inveterate specu- 
lator, and when I dropped in on him this morning, 
he had a dead sure point on Jersey Central : it 
would advance at least three per cent, before 
closing hour. He was almost willing to guarantee 
it, and he implored me to buy two or three 
hundred shares, just for luck.” 

Mrs. Lord had found a little pink-wrapped 
square parcel and was busy removing the rubber 
bands and the paper. 

‘‘"Well,” her husband went on, ‘‘much as I 
despise this stock gambling, I consented, and 
took a hundred shares, and, sure enough, I had 
no sooner bought than up went Jersey Central 
2 * 


12 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


like a rocket. Up, up, up, leading the entire 
market and creating such an excitement on the 
street as has not been known for an age.” 

“Where under the canopy did you get it?” 
Mrs. Lord exclaimed at this juncture, having 
brought to view a ring of the most exquisite 
workmanship, “ it’s just too lovely for anything, 
and you’re the dearest, best old husband that 
ever married a foolish little wife !” 

Mr. Lord smiled happily as he watched her 
eyes twinkle and her whole face glow with the 
delight that is seen on the face of a child that is 
given a new toy. 

“ I saw it first several months ago in a curious 
old jewelry shop down Maiden Lane,” he an- 
swered, as Mrs. Lord placed it upon her pretty 
taper finger and held it out into the shaft of 
sunshine that stole between the closed blinds. 
The diamonds blazed but the central gem gave 
out a soft, translucent light that seemed cool 
and refreshing amid the glow and glitter of its 
surroundings. “ I was pleased with it then, and I 
meant to buy it for you, but I did not feel that I 
could exactly afibrd it. Jewelry, you know, my 
dear, is not much in my line; but the moonstone 
in this ring is one of the finest I have ever 
seen — it seems to be the half of a perfect sphere 
— and I must say I rather fancied it.” 


IT COMES HOME. 


13 


‘‘And is it a moonstone?” Mrs. Lord asked, 
bringing it closer to her, and examining it care- 
fully, “01 am so awfully glad ; they say they 
bring good luck to the owner.” 

Mr. Lord smiled good-naturedly and fondly 
patted his wife on the hack. 

“ I’m sure I don’t see what luck as you call it 
there can be in a piece of feldspar or adularia,” 
he said. 

“ 0, but there is,” Mrs. Lord answered with 
great gravity and an air that was meant to be 
impressive; “to be sure there is. Why a four- 
leaf clover is nothing but grass you know, but 
then it’s lucky, and I can prove it — the Summer 
before I met you I found three four-leaf clovers 
in one day.” 


I 


14 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


II. 

ITS GENII MATERIALIZES. 

The following month Mr. and Mrs. Lord went 
to the seaside. Hot to a fashionable Summer 
resort where to eclipse one another in the num- 
ber and gorgeousness of their costumes is the 
chief ambition of the women, and the discussion 
of various brands of champagne in the hotel 
wine-room, the principal, if not the sole, occupation 
of the men; but to the most arcadian of places 
to be found on the coast : a spot unknown to the 
masses, combining all the advantages of sea air 
and all the benefits of pine forests. Here were 
to be had on one hand the ceaseless roar of the 
ocean, the fathomless reach of dazzling blue sea, 
the attendant long stretch of sandy beach ; and 
on the other, not a stone’s-throw away, the country 
village street with its quaint and cosey little vine- 
covered cottages setting baqk behind gardens rich 
in homely flowers ; the tall old trees that had stood 
for centuries and that now stretched thick, shady 
branches over the cool gray roadway; and the river, 
glinting brightly in the summer sunshine as it 


ITS GENII MATERIALIZES. 


15 


flowed peacefully between pebbly banks, from 
which rose huge bluffs capped with pines and ce- 
dars that formed a dark green border against the 
bright blue of the sky. 

At the top of one of these bluffs, somewhat 
less steep than the rest, nestling in a little grove 
of giants and overhung by ailanthus trees whose 
bright red blossoms tapped on its window panes 
and made a fringe along its eaves, stood a low, 
long, rambling, white-washed house. The porch 
was almost level with the driveway which skirted 
the door and over which the chickens roamed 
with unchecked rural freedom and the children 
of mine host gamboled bare-footed and brown- 
legged ‘‘ from dawn to dewy eve.” Cushions 
and easy chairs scattered about the porch in 
homely disorder, told that it was a favorite loung- 
ing place, and told the truth. Earely did it 
happen at any hour that the porch at Custis’s 
was free from loungers. Some of the boarders 
lounged there most of the day. Those who 
bathed lounged there when they were not bathing ; 
those who sailed lounged when they were not 
sailing, and those who played tennis lounged 
when they were not playing. Sometimes the 
loungers had a rubber at whist, sometimes they 
read light novels ,and sometimes they gossiped, 
told ghost stories or guessed riddles. The people 


16 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


at Custis’s led an easy life ; there was no deny- 
ing that, and it was for this reason*lhat Mr. and 
Mrs. Lord preferred Custis’s to any of the sum- 
mer resorts in the country. Mrs. Lord wore a 
blue flannel dress day in and day out, and Mr. 
Lord went about in corduroy knickerbockers, 
a brown flannel shirt and brown woolen stockings. 
When the mosquitoes came, as they sometimes 
did, Mr. Lord wore canvas leggings, and when 
they became unbearable, as very soon was the 
case so far as he was concerned, he packed his 
hand-satchel and departed on a geologizing tour. 

It was well on towards the end of July that 
the leggings having failed succesfully to ward off 
the assaults of the “ little beggars ” as he was 
wont to call them, Mr. Lord, as usual, bade his 
wife an affectionate farewell, and started for 
a trip to the green hills of Vermont, in search 
of a peculiar granite formation which he had 
read in the Scientific American had recently been 
discovered in that locality in small quantities. 
Mrs. Lord had been asked to go, but she had 
declined. The mosquitoes did not trouble her, 
she said, and she preferred to remain where she 
was to roaming about the country after pieces of 
ugly, uninteresting rock and stone. To tell the 
truth, Mrs. Lord, at that time, was a good deal 
more interested in her new ring than she would 


ITS GENII MATERIALIZES. 


17 


have cared for her husband to know, and what she 
most longed for, was an opportunity to test what 
seemed to her a peculiar charm or power possessed 
by the moonstone which was its central gem. 
The more closely she examined the ring, the 
more beautiful she discovered it to he. Aside 
from the rare brilliancy of the diamonds and the 
soft, pellucid light of the moonstone itself, the 
gold setting was a most superb bit of delicate 
chasing. It was covered with intricate tracery, 
forming arabesques of oriental design and com- 
bining Arabic or Moorish characters, which, she 
felt sure, could she only translate them, would tell 
her a romantic story of the trinket’s origin. That 
it had once belonged to an East Indian prince 
she was quite satisfied, and in her romantic soul, 
she imagined a thousand and one legends in 
which the ring and its original owner, whom 
she pictured as a tall, handsome, dark-eyed, swar- 
thy-skinned Arab, figured most prominently. 

Time and again, after placing it upon her 
finger on that bright sunny afternoon, somewhat 
over a month ago, she had gazed upon the 
opalescent beam that the moonstone gave forth 
and that seemed to follow her eye, no matter 
where she looked, and the beam had spread as 
she gazed upon it until it had changed into a 
great shaft of pearly light, and she had seemed to 


18 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


be looking down a long avenue, at the end of 
which were marble palaces with beautiful mosaic 
floors ; great mosques with gilded domes ; and 
many fountains throwing up sparkling jets of 
water that fell splashing back into wide stone 
basins, amid palm trees under which sat veiled 
women and olive-hued men, clad in garments of 
rare tints, richly embroidered, and wearing red 
caps with blue tassels or white turbans, such as 
she had seen in photographs and paintings of 
Eastern street scenes. 

Kepeatedly, however, the pictures had been 
shattered. Mr. Lord, coming upon her while she 
was in the midst of her reverie, had invariably, 
merely by means of some prosaic remark, wrecked 
the palaces, caused the mosques to totter and 
crumble, and swept away the fountains, the 
trees and the people, as though the breath of a 
sirocco from the desert had laid waste the city 
and destroyed its inhabitants. Now that Mr. 
Lord was gone, Mrs. Lord determined that she 
would see this vision to the end. What it all 
meant she could not understand. At flrst, she 
fancied it was her imagination, which no one 
knew better than herself, was most lively; but, 
having seen the same pictures repeatedly in the 
month since the ring was hers, she at length 
dismissed this supposition from her mind and 


ITS GENII MATERIALIZES. 


19 


reasoned calmly with herself that it was some- 
thing more. In a word, that realism and phan- 
tasy were linked together, but how or where or 
why she could not comprehend. 

Dinner was over at Custis’s and a large party 
of the hoarders having taken passage in Captain 
Custis’s big sail boat were being carried by a stiff 
breeze down the river. Of those who remained 
behind, one had gone off to do some photograph- 
ing with a tiny camera which was his hobby; 
a couple had strolled away in search of a seques- 
tered nook where she could read poetry and he 
could smoke his pipe and listen at the same 
time, and the rest, with the single exception of 
Mrs. Lord, had gone to their rooms for an after- 
noon nap. Mrs. Lord, who had been bathing 
in the river in the morning and whose hair was 
still far from dry, took a chair out on the lawn, 
and, with a towel over her shoulders and her 
wealth of golden tresses ” spread out so that 
the sun could exercise its drying powers upon 
it, made herself as comfortable as possible. There 
were many white-winged skiffs on the river and 
for a time she sat watching them. At length, 
however, she became aware that the shaft of 
light issuing from the moonstone of her ring 
was seemingly endeavoring to draw her eyes 
upon it, and she certainly was in no humor to 
3 


20 


MRS. LORD S MOONSTONE. 


resist its wooing influence. She turned her 
hand in her lap so that the gem was in full view, 
and she permitted her gaze unchecked, to rest 
upon the little gleam that issued from its depths. 
Slowly the gleam grew wider ; the light, at first 
soft and cold as a moon-beam, grew brighter 
and brighter, until the sunlight paled beside it, 
and the surroundings faded away as in a mist, 
while, in their stead, came once again, the long 
avenue she had' so often seen. 

At the end of the avenue this time, however, 
she no longer saw the open street, but what 
appeared to be a sort of patio or garden with 
high walls, where grew orange trees from which 
the luscious, golden fruit depended, and jas- 
mine trees, whereon grew a wealth of white 
and yellow flowers, the odor of which seemed 
wafted to her senses up this long avenue of light. 
The floor of the court was marble, beautifully 
inlaid, and here and there were superb specimens 
of Moorish filigree work and Arab decorations 
full of rich color. Standing in the patio, adding 
wonderfully to the picturesqueness of the scene, 
she saw a youth, slender and supple, wearing 
an embroidered jacket and the full baggy trousers 
of the Arab. And yet he was not dark enough 
for an Arab, she thought. His complexion was 
much fairer than that of any Arab she had ever 


ITS GENII MATERIALIZES. 


21 


dreamed of, and moreover his eyes were gray, 
and his hair and mustache a pronounced blonde. 
As she looked at him, his face, which was at 
first quite sad, appeared to brighten; it seemed 
to her that he must have caught a glimpse of 
her at the other end of the long avenue, for he 
was stretching out his arms towards her and 
making signs as if he wished her to understand 
something he was trying to communicate. Though 
she could see him quite plainly, he appeared a 
very long way off ; and, though his mouth moved 
as if in speech, not a sound reached her. It 
was like gazing out through a telescope at a 
far distant world, only one little speck of which 
was visible, and that little speck magnified a 
thousand times. Even as she gazed she won- 
dered. She realized the phenomenal strange- 
ness of it all, just as one wonders in a dream 
sometimes and thinks of the nonsense and ab- 
surdity of the experience through which one is 
passing. As she wondered she became aware 
that the being, — man, spirit, myth or whatever 
it might he — at which she was gazing, was 
moving. He seemed to be coming towards her. 
Yes, there was no doubt of it. He was running 
now, the lightly tinted burnous which he wore 
fluttering behind him in the breeze made by his 
own swift passage. He was speeding on up the 


22 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


long vista of light with an easy, graceful lope 
that filled Mrs. Lord with admiration and made 
her heart beat nervously. She was not altogether 
pleased, nevertheless. A sense that she was 
doing what she ought not to do, that she was 
committing an impropriety, if .not a sin, in thus 
trifiing with what impressed her as being the 
supernatural, pervaded her for the time, and 
again and again she tried to turn away from the 
scene and banish it from her view; but, try as 
she would, she could not. Her eyes were fast 
riveted upon the youth who was as handsome as 
any man she had ever dreamed of in the days 
before she inet John Lord, and had determined 
to be an old man’s darling rather than run the 
risk of being a young man’s slave. Hearer and 
nearer he came with a speed that was superhuman, 
and, as he approached her the burnous, the embroi- 
dered jacket, and the baggy Arab trousers faded 
away as in a picture projected by a steroptican, 
changing into garments of a higher civilization. 

Slowly the light that had surrounded him, 
the glare that had hidden every thing else from 
her view, grew less brilliant. She strained her 
eyes to catch a glimpse of familiar objects; her 
temples were throbbing painfully; she felt the 
blood come and go in her cheeks, and then — she 
doubled up her hand, the ring was hidden from 


ITS GENII MATERIALIZES. 


23 


sight, and the river, the trees, the sunlight, the 
white-winged skiffs came back with a suddenness 
that was nothing short of startling. But they 
did not conie alone. There were voices with 
them. The party that had gone down the river 
with Captain Custis had returned, and it had 
brought back a new boarder. Mrs. Lord caught 
sight of him the moment she raised her eyes. 
To her he was not quite a stranger, and, from the 
look he gave her, as he passed up the walk to- 
wards the house from the steps leading from the 
landing, it was evident that she also had been 
recognized by him. It was the Arab of her 
vision. 


24 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


in. 

IT IS LOCKED IN A JEWEL CASE. 

Eomantic as she was Mrs. Lord was not alto- 
gether pleased by her experience of the afternoon. 
She was not a little shaken up, and at the same 
time considerably mystified and nonplussed. If 
her former experiences while wearing the moon- 
stone and gazing into its depths had been strange, 
this last one had certainly been more so, and her 
first impulse, on reaching her room, was to take 
the gem from her finger and lock it up in her 
j^wel case. Having acted in accordance with the 
dictates of her will in this instance, as she was 
generally wont to do, she threw herself upon her 
bed, and, burying her face in the not over-soft 
pillow fell to w’^eeping. They were not tears 
of grief which she shed, hut hysterical tears 
that fiowed at the bidding of her over-wrought 
nerves. The tension which had been sustained 
for hours had relaxed and she sobbed and wept 
as a natural consequence of the relaxation. Care- 
fully to take into consideration all that she had 
gone through since dinner, and to argue it all out 


IT IS LOCKED IN A JEWEL CASE. 


25 


in an unprejudiced and matter-of-fact way, was, 
with her, a sheer impossibility. 

That she might have fallen asleep, and dreamed, 
never once entered her mind, or if it did, it was 
speedily dismissed as unworthy a moment’s seri- 
ous thought. To her, the idea that the ring, like 
Aladdin’s lamp, had its genii, was by no means 
so miraculous as not to he credited. On the 
other hand, she was quite willing to believe it, 
and believe it she did. The only question which 
arose was as to what manner of man this genii 
was. She feared that, having invoked his presence, 
no matter how unwittingly, he might prove a 
Frankenstein and wreak upon her some terrible 
vengeance — inflict upon her some awful retri- 
bution. She pictured him to herself in all moods. 
I^’ow, he was kind and gentle, answering her 
every bidding as a humble hut powerful slave 
and ally; again, he was fondly afiectionate, and 
again passionately loving. She thought of the 
embarassing position in which she would be 
placed, should the latter dream prove a reality, 
and while the romantic element in her nature 
rather welcomed than repelled the thoughts ot 
such an episode, still, she would not admit herself 
other than a true and loyal wife, and would not, 
for even so long as a heart-heat, recognize the 
possibility of encouraging such a course on the 


26 MRS. LORD^S moonstone!. 

part of her genii, no matter how earnestly or 
persistently he should woo. A brave and deter- 
mined rejection of his advances, she argued, might 
bring down upon her his wrath, and she trembled 
at the thought of what the result would he. The 
time when her husband should return and find 
this creature ; the time when he should become 
aware, as sooner or later he must, of the nature of 
the bond or relationship existing between it and 
his wife, also came up before her in her train of 
thought, and the subject was far more annoying 
and peace-disturbing than the mere possibilities 
which had preceded it, because this was an event 
which seemed to her unavoidable. 

She was thus deep in the contemplation of an 
apparent inevitability, when she was rather rudely 
aroused from her reverie by the clanging of the 
supper bell, which was being vigorously rung 
from the porch just beneath her window. Spring- 
ing hastily up, she glanced in the mirror over 
her dressing table. It was a glass which, fiend- 
like, invariably persisted in distorting her pretty 
features out of all semblance to their natural 
regularity and beauty. On this occasion, it was 
even more successful than usual in impressing the 
lady that she was neither a Hebe nor a Psyche. 
She saw a pair of very red eyelids and a nose 
that wore a deeper tint of pink than the sun and 


IT IS LOCKED IN A JEWEL CASE. 


27 


wind had ever combined to give it, though they 
had been making repeated attacks upon it almost 
daily since she arrived at Custis’s. 

I am a fright,” she said, as she turned her 
head from side to side and surveyed her face at 
various angles, “ and Tve half a notion to send 
down word I have a headache, and will take some 
tea and toast in my room.” 

At this instant a faint odor of something 
frying came to her through the opened window, 
wafted thither from the kitchen, and she remem- 
bered having seen that morning one of the bare- 
footed and brown-legged sons of the house of 
Custis lugging home a basket overflowing with 
soft crabs, fresh from the river. That whiflf 
decided her. She suddenly became aware that 
she was possessed of an appetite that tea and 
toast would not satisfy, and she was inclined to 
laugh at the thought that she had entertained the 
notion of so frugal a supper for even so short a 
moment. 

One thing is certain,” she said to herself, 
“ the genii has not robbed me of my desire for 
food.” 

It was nevertheless with some trepidation that 
Mrs. Lord at length descended to the wide, but 
low-ceiled dining room. She had bathed her 
face in cooling and delicately perfumed toilet water 


28 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


in the effort to remove all traces of her recent 
tears, she had brushed out and recoiled her long, 
golden hair, she had donned a most becoming 
knitted skull cap of blue and white, and she had 
twisted a silk handkerchief of the same colors 
about the neck of her flannel boating costume. 

There was something seemingly coquettish in 
these preparations, and yet she would not have 
admitted, even to herself, that she was doing 
anything more than usual, or than she would have 
done had “ her genii,”as she was now pleased to 
call the new boarder, not so strangely arrived. 

She stopped in the hall, at the foot of the stairs, 
before going into the room where the lively rattle 
of knives and forks against ironstone china told 
full well that the household was already engaged 
in that unpoetical, yet important, occupation — 
eating. The register — for primitive as Custis’s 
was in some of its appointments, it was not 
behind in this respect — lay open upon a bracket- 
supported desk, and it was to glance at the last 
name on the exposed page, that Mrs. Lord halted. 

The writing was large and heavy, showing signs 
of both self-complacency and will, while the up- 
ward tendency of the words would have suggested 
to the student of graphology, that the writer was 
as ambitious as he was egotistical. It is doubtful 
whether Mrs. Lord attempted to read this subtle 


IT IS LOCKED IN A JEWEL CASE. 


29 


message which the signature bore with it, or, in- 
deed, whether her knowledge of the subject was 
sutEcient to do so, even had she made the attempt. 
What she did read was this : 

BEN HAMED, TUNIS, 

and it told her that her genii not only had a local 
habitation and a name, but could write in good 
English characters, if it told her nothing more. 

Among the many who were in the dining-room 
when she entered, her eyes very promptly sought 
out the Tunisian, who, she found, had been 
given a place half way down the table at which 
she was in the habit of sitting, and on the opposite 
side from her. It thus happened that she had an 
excellent opportunity of critically inspecting him, 
and, though she was by no means free from nerv- 
ousness and a certain ill-defined superstitious dread, 
the fact that both he and she were in the midst of 
so many living, moving, flesh-and-blood people, 
took away, in a measure, the romantic and super- 
natural halo with which she had been inclined to 
surround him. 

Looking at him in this light, she could but ad- 
mit to herself that he was not all that he had at 
first seemed. Robbed of the glare and glamour of 
oriental surroundings, and the magnifying power 
of the curious gem which now lay safely in the 


30 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


bottom of bef jewel-box up-stairs, Ben Hamed 
was nothing more than a thin, sallow-complex- 
ioned and rather slovenly-attired Arab. He ate 
with his knife and he made an unpleasant noise 
with his mouth as he hurriedly chewed his food. 
There was certainly very little about him that was 
in anyway attractive, and Mrs. Lord began to 
wonder how she could have imagined for a moment 
that he was either handsome or graceful. On the 
other hand, the more she looked at him the more 
she disliked him, and, with the dislike, came an in- 
crease of nervousness wLich was further aug- 
mented when the young man, having finished his 
meal, instead of leaving the table, sat still in his 
place, staring steadily and stolidly at her from be- 
neath his droopy, dreamy eyelids. Her own eyes 
dropped under his gaze, and for a few minutes she 
scarcely knew what was going on about her. 
Then she heard him uttering a mumbled expres- 
sion of disappointment or disapprobation, she was 
not quite sure which, and the next moment he had 
pushed back his chair and departed. 

Sitting next to Mrs. Lord was a certain Miss 
Shandon — a woman elderly enough to equivo- 
cate about her age, and young enough to ima- 
gine that the equivocation would not be suspec- 
ted. She had numerous affected kittenish ways 
that did much to hinder a deception that they 


IT IS LOCKED IN A JEWEL CASE. 


31 


were meant to further, and she dressed in cos- 
tumes as unbecoming as was her behavior. She 
had been watching the Arab very closely and she 
had noticed how he, in turn, had riveted his lan- 
guorous look upon the pretty Mrs. Lord. She 
had noticed it with a good deal of envy, and she 
was accordingly more than pleased when she heard 
that echo of his heart’s disapproval which seemed 
involuntarily to escape him as he rose to go. 

The horrid man !” she exclaimed, though a 
pleased smile quite out of keeping with her words 
played over her unattractive features as she spoke. 
Why it was simply disgusting. He stared you 
clear out of countenance, Mrs. Lord, and it was 
not a complimentary stare, either.” 

Mrs. Lord was too much embarrassed at the 
moment to make reply. She was aware- that 
everybddy was talking, and she was half conscious 
that she was as much a subject of the conversation 
as the Arab. Moreover she was painfully im- 
pressed with the notion that she was blushing and 
that her embarrassment must be palpable to every- 
one. At one moment she was tempted to beat a 
retreat to her room, but she was not certain 
whether, in her present state, her legs would bear 
her, and she accordingly remained where she was. 

When, at length, she recovered in a measure . 
her self-composure she found the dining-room quite 
4 


32 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


empty with the exception of herself and Captain 
Custis’s eldest daughter Juanita, who was stand- 
ing at the end of the table looking at her. 

“ Oh ITeetie !” she exclaimed in some dismay, 
‘‘ What have I been doing ?” 

ITeetie smiled pleasantly and reassuringly. 

“ i^othing,” she replied, “ you seemed rather 
thoughtful, that was all; and you see you have 
eaten scarcely anything. Shall I get you some 
hot crabs ?” 

‘‘ITo, thanks,” Mrs. Lord answered, and she 
looked at her plate to find that Neetie had not ex- 
aggerated the truth. Her appetite, ravenous as it 
had been half an hour before, had left her, and 
even the thought of food was now distasteful. 

‘‘ Tell me about him, Heetie,” she went on, 
pointing to Ben Hamed’s empty chair, that man 
who sat there ! Where did he come from ? Is he 
acquainted here ?” 

‘‘'I’m sure I know very little of him,” returned 
the girl, speaking with a care for grammatical 
construction that indicated in a measure her fitness 
for the position of school marm ” in the village 
— a position in which she served eight months of 
the twelve. “ He came this afternoon without any 
previous announcement, and he told us that he had 
been recommended here by a gentleman ia Hew 
York, whose name he had forgotten,” 


IT IS LOCKED m A JEWEL CASE. 


33 


Has he come to stop any time ?” Mrs. Lord 
asked, and there was still a degree of nervousness 
in her voice. 

“ I don’t know,” ISTettie replied, and then, as if 
the thought had just come to her, she exclaimed, 
^‘Oh.I must tell you the strangest thing: His 
trunk — the oddest looking box you ever saw, like 
a big square tea chest, bound with bronze hands 
and figured in the queerest fashion imaginable, 
came here nobody knows how. Father says he 
didn’t bring it up in the boat ; none of the boys 
brought it ; there hasn’t been a wagon up to the 
house to-day, and yet when I took him up to his 
room, — which is directly over yours, — there w^as 
this box standing in one corner. I’m sure, I can’t 
account for it, can you ? 

Mrs. Lord did not attempt to account for it. 
She was worried, distressed, and annoyed, and she 
lost no time after this in going to her room. She 
had an acute dread of again coming face to face 
with Ben Hamed, and she preferred the seclusion 
of her own chamber and its little dickering candle 
to a seat on the porch down stairs with the pos- 
sibility, if not indeed the probability, of the strange 
Arab for a companion. 

After half an hour’s serious thought she got 
out her writing materials and penned a letter to 
her husband. To tell him all that had happened 


34 ' 


MSS. lord's moonstoi^e. 


would, she knew, be just so much labor thrown 
away. , What she desired now above all else was 
to have him by her side. His presence would 
give her confidence and his practical philosophy 
would do much, she felt sure, towards driving 
away these fantastic and romantic unrealities that 
seemed to be weaving their web about her. 

Some strange things have happened since you 
left,’’ she wrote, ‘‘ and I want to consult you. Do 
not think, dear, that this a trivial matter; it is 
not. It concerns your happiness and mine, and 
the sooner you come, the better it will he for us 
both.” And, having added her love and her kisses, 
and signed it with the pet name by which her hus- 
band loved to call her, she wrote the inevitable 
postscript : 

‘‘ P. S. — The mosquitoes have gone — a North- 
east wind has driven every one of them back to 
the woods.” 


Its genii exercises his powers. 


85 


lY. 

ITS GENII EXERCISES HIS POWERS. 

The days directly following the sending of the 
letter to Mr. Lord were anything but pleasant 
ones for his wife. She spent much of her time 
in her room, and only ventured out of doors when 
she knew that the Arab, who remained a guest in 
house, had gone sailing on the river, had started 
for a pilgrimage to the beach, or had otherwise 
betaken himself well out of sight and hearing. 
By an arrangement with Keetie she managed to 
keep herself posted as to when he took his meals, 
and thus avoided meeting him on the narrow stair- 
way or in the passage. Her precautions in this 
respect were, as might be expected, not unnoted 
by the other hoarders, and they furnished them 
with a fertile and ever-availahle topic for gossip. 

Meanwhile Ben Hamed went about with eyes 
cast down and a generally woe-begone expression 
on his sallow-features. There was disappointment 
in his very attitude as he sat on the lawn for hours 
at a stretch, now glancing out over the sparkling 
waters of the river at his feet, now with his gaze 

4 * 


36 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


fixed upon his folded hands as if in the deepest 
meditation ; and there was, moreover, an unmis- 
takable restless longing and expectancy in his look, 
as again and again he scanned the features of each 
of the boarders, with whom he came in contact. 
He had not become popular with the other guests 
at Custis’s. Save to Tom Parks, a clever young 
artist who was stopping at the house, he had had 
very little to say to any of them, and in spite of 
their combined efforts to elicit from him some facts 
as to his previous history, the object of his visit to 
America, and kindred matters which were distress- 
ing their curious minds, he remained taciturn and 
reticent, sometimes, indeed, treating their advances 
with undisguised rudeness. Even Miss Shandon, 
with her assumed ingenuousness, was unable to 
draw him out or to melt, in the smallest degree, 
his icy exterior. She made no attempt to conceal 
her admiration for him, but, unfortunately, he alone 
of all the people at the resort, was apparently 
totally unconscious of the high place to which she 
had been pleased to elevate him in her esteem. 
To Parks, however, he seemed to take a decided 
fancy, and he was more than pleased when the 
artist showed him his highly-colored sketches of 
cloud efiects, and happy combinations of blue 
waters, bluer skies and deep green foliage. On 
more than one occasion he accompanied him on 


ITS GENII EXERCISES HIS POWERS. 


37 


his sketching tours, and watched with interest as 
he deftly transferred to canvas bits of the pic- 
turesque scenery of the neighborhood. 

A week had dragged by, and no answer had 
come to Mrs. Lord’s importunate entreaty to her 
husband to return. Daily she had looked for a 
letter and daily, she had been disappointed, until 
at length her disappointment had given place to 
annoyance not unmingled with resentment, and at 
the end of seven days she was, as may be imag- 
ined, in anything but the most amiable of moods. 
Owing to her self-imposed hermitage, Custis’s 
had become insufierably dull, and she longed for 
some excitement to vary the tedious monotony. 
Her fear of the Arab, which at first was distract- 
ting enough in its way, had gradually grown less 
pronounced, and she was now almost tempted to 
court an interview rather than to avoid it, though 
a lingering dread of the consequences still haun- 
ted her. 

On the morning of the eighth day after the 
despatch of her letter, having been informed that 
Ben Hamed and Tom Parks had early departed 
for a journey in search of the source of the river 
which flowed by their doors, a matter of seven or 
eight miles up a tortuous stream, through marshy 
meadow’s and overhung by drooping willows, she 
determined to indulge herself in a walk in di- 


38 MRS. LORD^S MOONSTONE. 

rectly the opposite direction; and, immediately 
after breakfast she repaired to her room in order 
to make ready for the jaunt. While standing 
at her bureau an irresistible desire seemed to take 
possesion of her to look once more at the curious 
gem which had brought upon her all the vexation 
and worry of the week just ended, and, almost 
before she realized what she was doing, she had 
opened her jewel case, had taken the ring from 
where she had thrown it on that eventful after- 
noon, and had slipped it upon her finger. There 
was surely a strange fascination for her about this 
bit of antique jewelry, a fascination that bordered 
upon the supernatural, and, though a tremor of 
apprehension passed over her as she handled it 
once more, she seemed utterly unable to combat 
its myterious infiuence and she turned it about 
until the moonstone with its milky white gleam 
was uppermost. As she did so she heard voices 
on the lawn below, and a hasty glance from her 
window told her that Captain Custis was about 
to set sail for a trip down the river towards the 
village. For the moment she seemed to forget 
that the ring was still upon her hand. Her wish 
to be a passenger in the boat was the absorbing 
thought, and in a twinkling she had donned a 
hat and was hurrying down stairs. A moment 
later she had taken a place beside the (Jap tain in 


MS GENII EXERCISES HIS POWERS. 39 

the stern sheets, while the Gertrude had swung 
away from the pier and was headed under a fair 
breeze for the channel which rounds the bar a 
couple of hundred yards below the landing. 

The Captain was going to the village for 
provisions, he said, but he would be pleased to 
take her to the beach, if she so desired. Mrs. 
Lord did so desire, and the obliging host of the 
Custis House accordingly let out his sail and the 
trim craft cut through the water at a very lively 
rate. The Captain and his passenger chatted 
pleasantly as they flew along, and it seemed but 
a short time indeed before they were passing 
through the railroad-bridge draw and were steer- 
ing for the bulkhead at the end of a little inlet 
that the river’s current had cut into the the sandy 
soil of the ocean’s brim. Here the lady disem- 
barked. 

Horthvvard and southward stretched the glitter- 
ing sands, while to the east spread out the vast 
blue ocean with its border of foaming breakers. 
Ho where was there to be seen a single human 
being. Just around a jutting cliflp a view of the 
bathing pavilion, half a mile away, and of a score 
or more of people lolling on the beach might have 
been had, hut the immediate landscape was neither 
marred nor adorned by man. The breeze was 
from off shore and the rays of the sun, which was 


40 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


well up in the heavens, beat down fiercely and 
fervently. 

It was a very warm day and this fact became 
more and more patent to Mrs. Lord as her walk 
along the sands, away from, rather than towards 
civilization, continued. Reaching at length a 
point where some drift-wood from a long-forgotten 
wreck had piled itself up into a barricade, she sat 
down on one of the timbers, in the shadow formed 
by the others, and at once fell into a dreamy mood 
of deepest thought. Her hands, as usual, lay in her 
lap, and her gaze, becoming tired of the dazzling 
blue waters and sky, and ,the still more dazzling 
white sand, bent itself upon her entwined fingers. 
Then it was, for the first time since leaving the 
house, that she became aware that she was still 
wearing the fateful ring. As she noted the fact 
her heart seemed suddenly to stop beating and for 
an instant to remain pulseless. The next moment 
the little cold gleam of light from the moonstone’s 
wondrous depths caught and held her glance, and, 
yielding to its strange, magnetic influence, all 
dread, fear, apprehension or whatever it may have 
been which had oppressed her, fled away : dissolved 
into a misty nothingness and left her with a sense 
of thorough and complete resignation. 

At the same time the light in the ring was grow- 
ing more brilliant. Slowly it expanded until now. 


ITS GENII EXERCISES HIS POWERS. 


41 


as on each previous occasion when she had per- 
mitted her eyes to rest upon it, it formed a long 
shining avenue. At first the glare was so great 
that she could not distinguish the picture which 
was presented to her at the farther end. By 
degrees, however, two figures took shape, clear 
and distinct as on the face of a mirror. In one 
she recognized the artist Parks, seated before his 
portable easel, which he had seemingly set up in 
the most charming of little bosky dells. In his 
left hand he held his palette and maul stick, while 
with numerous brushes in his right, he was waving 
frantically to the other figure to return, and laugh- 
ing immoderately as he did so.. The other figure, 
which was no less a personage than Ben Hamed, 
was running away from his companion as fast as 
his legs would carry him, and he was running 
with that deliciously agile motion that had so 
charmed Mrs. Lord when she had first seen 
him. She also noticed that he was running 
towards her — coming down the illuminated path- 
way with a speed that soon left the artist far 
behind, and in a short time quite out of sight. 
As he came nearer she saw that his face wore 
an expression of intense delight. A smile played 
over his features, and so lighted them up as to 
make them appear all that she had once dreamed 
them, He seemed to her more than ever a sort 


42 


MRS. lord’s MOONSTONE. 


of Oriental Adonis, and she wondered, even as she 
looked and admired, how she could ever have 
thought him plain or, what had been nearer the 
true color of her thoughts, repulsive, — and why 
she should have so strenuously striven to avoid 
him. Once again he seemed to her the ideal of 
her romantic youth and innocence, and she prom- 
ised herself that if he should come to her now, as 
she hoped he might, she would surely make 
amends for her ill-treatment of him in the past. 

Suddenly the runner stopped. He appeared 
to he standing not ten feet distant from her, but so 
surrounded was he by the glamour and glare of 
the moonstone’s trascendent brilliancy, as to shut 
out and eclipse all the natural surroundings and 
make invisible every object save himself. She 
saw him raise his eyes and lift his hands as in 
prayer. His lips moved, as though he would 
invoke Heavenly aid, and then she heard what she 
recognized at once as the voice of the Arab. 

Allah be praised !” it said, ‘‘ Allah, adored by 
shadows of morn and eve has spun our destiny. 
Blessed be the name of Allah !” 

Mrs. Lord’s hand turned spasmodically in her 
lap. The moonstone was hidden from her sight. 
The glare of the avenue of light had once more 
given place to the glare of sea and beach and sky. 
Ben Hamed in the flesh was standing before her. 


ITS GENII EXERCISES HIS POWERS. 


43 


Very straight and lithe and graceful he seemed, 
while his fair skin appeared all aglow with the 
warm hlood that coursed beneath it. Admiration 
had by now completely routed every less flattering 
sentiment, and had brought with it the semblance 
at least, of an absorbing passion. A tiny spark 
it seemed to Mrs. Lord at firsts but she recognized 
its presence, and, even as she cast an admiring 
glance at the handsome fellow before her — a 
glance which involuntarily escaped her, and which 
she could not have withheld had she been threat- 
ened with the direst punishment for such action — 
her whole being thrilled with the sensibility 
that the feeblest fanning might cause that spark 
to burst into a consuming flame. A strange, 
unaccountable and altogether inconquerahle im- 
pulse had siezed upon her personality, and 
seemed to he forcing her with an utter disregard 
of her still live, though somewhat slumbrous con- 
science, to say and do that which she but too 
well knew was at least imprudent if not im- 
proper. 

“Won’t you sit down?” she asked; and as 
she spoke jthe very tones of her voice were a 
surprise to her. There was something unmis- 
'takably tender and wooing about them. They 
seemed to echo the secrets of her inner soul — 
her holy of holies as it were — and she was amazed 
6 


44 


MRS, lord’s moonstone. 


at what she deemed the treachery of her own 
tongue. 

“ Ben Hamed is happy,” said the Arab in a 
voice not a whit less passionate, while his langu- 
orous gray eyes beamed with a love-light that 
would have been a signal of danger to the 
woman had she not been bound body and soul 
by the weird spell that possessed a force and 
power more potent than any natural human 
agency. 

Many suns have come and gone,” he went on, 
as he threw himself on the sand beside the 
picturesque young wife, his gaze fastened upon 
the fair face that was still turned delightely 
towards him. Many suns have come and gone 
since the eye of £en Hamed first rested on the 
beautiful daughter of the unknown land. Some- 
times he grew weary of watching and waiting, 
but Allah was kind to him. In the end Allah 
showed him the way, and he followed it.” 

Under ordinary circumstances the Arab’s stil- 
ted, third-person style of expression would 
have excited the risibilities of Mrs. Lord, who 
was possessed of a keen sense of the ridiculous, 
and she would, in all probability, have had diffi- 
culty in refraining from laughter. As it was, 
however, it seemed but natural that he should 
talk in this way, and for the nonce, she was even 
inclined to follow his example. 


ITS GENII EXEUCiSES HIS POWERS. 


45 


‘‘ When did Ben Hamed first see the daughter 
of the unknown land she asked, her woman’s 
curiosity asserting itself and riding rough-shod 
into the very courts of the supernatural and the 
romantic. Who and what are you ? How came 
you here ? What is this strange link, that, 
buried in the depths of a curious old gem, exerts 
its weird influence over us both ? These questions, 
and a hundred more, bubbled up in her mind, one 
after the other, and, though she longed to ask 
them all in a breath, she bode her time and went 
deliberately to work. Perhaps, if handled cau- 
tiously the Arab would make all plain to her, she 
thought. At any rate she could try it. It was 
very pleasant to sit here with him at her feet. 
There was a charm in his presence that she could 
not resist. Her being was thrilled by the delic- 
ious melody of his voice, even as harp strings 
thrill ahd vibrate when swept by the hands of the 
harper. Time was speeding on unheeded. She 
was far happier than she could ever remember 
having been before. Conscience had been lulled 
to sleep and her duty to her husband and her 
duty to herself were, for the time, alike gladly 
forgotten. 

“ Far away across the rolling seas, beyond all 
the storm and the tempest of the great ocean,” 
the Oriental continued, as his hands played idly 


46 MRS. LORD^S MOONSTONE. 

with the sands, Ben Hamed lived in fair Tunis. 
It was his home and he was happy. Dates grew 
at his threshold, apricots and orange trees hung 
their luscious golden fruit over the marble paths 
of his garden. He was rich and powerful. He 
sent his wares to the Horth and to the 
West. He was a merchant and he knew the 
English tongue, because he had learned of trade 
and commerce from a son of the Horth who 
came to him to take advantage of Tunisian 
ignorance, and to wring wealth from Tunisian 
credulousness. Ben Hamed had taken unto 
him a daughter of Islam. She was beautiful 
to look upon, but her beauty pales beside the 
beauty of her Western sister, as the beauty of the 
night pales beside the beauty of the day. She 
gave to him a precious ring, — an heirloom she 
said, which had been in her family for many gen- 
erations. She was the last of her race, and to 
him she gave it, because it was the ring that her 
father had worn, and her brother, as well. It was 
a man’s ring she said, and she had been told it 
possessed a charm. Unfortunately — ah! too un- 
fortunately for her, alas I” and Ben Hamed sighed 
as he spoke, while a look of tenderest pity, Mrs. 
Lord thought, seemed to come into his impas- 
sioned up-turned eyes, “ Unfortunately, the twin 
ring, the other half of the mystic moonstone. 


ITS GENII EXERCISES HIS POWERS. 


47 


inounted in the same manner, surrounded by 
sentences in hieroglyphics dating hack thousands 
of years, had been lost. It had been .worn by the 
pride of her great-great-grandfather’s harem, she 
said, who, vile woman that she was, forsaking her 
lord and master, evaded his guard of eunuchs and 
fled with a sneaking Christian far to the north- 
ward.” 

Mrs. Lord’s romantic soul fairly revelled- in the 
revelation that was being made to her. It was so 
like a wonderful fairy tale or a chapter from the 
Arabian Hights, that she fancied for a moment 
that she must be dreaming, and that it was her 
own imagination that was engaged in Ailing in 
the details of a fleeting phantasmagoria. She was 
tempted to resort to the standard expedient of 
testing her wakefulness, namely, by pinching, but 
before she could do so, the Arab had risen to his 
knees, had seized her hand and was pressing his 
hot kisses upon it and upon the ring that graced 
her finger. He seemed to have gone wild with 
delight at making the discovery. 

“ It is here,” he cried, ‘‘ it is yours. The charm 
is made clear at last. It is the work of Allah ! ” 
and between each sentence he kissed and re-kissed 
the moonstone, and the fair hand that wore it. 

Mrs. Lord was not a little startled at the turn 
afiairs had taken, but the same strange, passionate 
5 *' 


48 


MRS. LORD^S MOONSTONE. 


intoxication possessed. * her and she was not dis- 
pleased. She subniitted unresistingly to the fel- 
low’s caresses and permitted him to hold her hand 
until his excitement had subsided. Then she 
spoke to him in the same softly-wooing voice that 
she had used before, and that she could not have 
changed, she felt sure, even had she so desired. 

“And the other? ” she asked. 

He .held up his right hand. Upon its third 
finger was a ring the exact counterpart of her 
own. The stone, the manner of setting, the chas- 
ing, all were identical. The gems seemed once 
to have formed one perfect sphere which had been 
most skilfully halved. ^ 

“ It is indeed wonderful,” she said. 

/ “Allah be praised ! ” murmured the Arab de- 
voutly. 

He was kneeling in the sands with bowed head. 
Involuntarily Mrs. Lord bent her own head for- 
ward. Once more her eyes fell on the ring upon 
her finger, the moonstone in which seemed to be 
reflecting all the light of the sun, now in the 
zenith. Again the illuminated- pathway appeared 
with the Arab kneeling within it. Only for a 
moment she saw the great glare, and then, slowly 
it grew dim and indistinct. Ben Hamed’s figure 
gradually faded from view. When she looked 
up, as she did presently, she was quite alone. 


49 


ITS GENII EXERCISES HIS POWERS. 

A dense black cloud had swept across the sun’s 
disk, and the wdnd was blowing cold and raw from 
the northeast. The ring, which had never fitted 
her tightly, had slipped from her finger and lay 
stone downward in her lap. 


60 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


Y. 

ITS GENII APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS. 

Mrs. Lord’s conscience upon regaining its nor- 
mal condition of sensitiveness smote her unmerci- 
fully. Her performance of the morning she now 
saw in its true light and she could not help admit- 
ting that she had committed an egregious error. 
Mr. Lord had doubtless never received her letter, 
and to have taken revenge for a seeming slight, 
that probably after all was entirely unintentional, 
was, she now unsparingly told herself, not only 
cruelly unkind but absolutely despicable. That 
her meeting with Ben Hamed was accidental, she 
would not believe for one moment. She was 
angry with herself, and she had made up her mind 
to accept no loophole of escape. She freely ac- 
knowledged that a powerful impulse had seemed 
to urge her on, but she also held that her duty 
was to have struggled against it, and to have over- 
come it. She ought not even to have looked at 
the ring, knowing, as she did, its dangerous char- 
acter, much less have been so weak as to slip it 
upon her finger. She should have remembered 


ITS GENII APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS. 51 


that if its genii could come from the north coast 
of Africa in response to a mere glance into its 
mystic depths, he could quite as readily come from 
a distance of a half dozen miles up this winding 
river. 

Mrs. Lord was thoroughly angered at herself, 
and, when she reached her room, she threw the 
gem into her jewel case, resolving that never, 
under any circumstances, would she take it up 
again, — at any rate not until her husband re- 
turned, and then only to explain and, if possible, 
prove to the satisfaction of his unimaginative mind 
its wonderful properties ; and there is every rea- 
son to believe that she thoroughly meant to keep 
her vow. 

Ben Hamed and Tom Parks did not return 
from their sketching tour until long after supper 
was over, and by that time Mrs. Lord, on purpose 
to avoid the Arab, of whom she was now more 
afraid than ever, had retired once more to the 
seclusion of her own bed-chamber. Somewhat 
later in the evening, seated at her window, she 
heard voices on the lawn below, and among them 
she recognized that of the artist. 

‘‘ It was the most curious thing I ever saw,” he 
was saying, “ the heathen had taken a picturesque 
pose on the trunk of a tree that grew out over the 
stream, and I, with my easel set up and palette 


52 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


in hand, could not resist the temptation to dash 
him in.” 

‘‘ 0 you horrid man ! ” Mrs. Lord heard Miss 
Shandon say, he might have caught his death of 
cold.” 

At this there was a general laugh and the artist 
proceeded to explain that by “ dashing in ” he 
merely meant roughly sketching His Oriental 
Highness upon the canvas that he had before him. 

Miss Shandon said, Oh ! oh ! How stupid ot 
me ! ” apd, amid a few more little titters from the 
rest of the party, the listener heard Parks’s bass 
voice going on with his story. 

“ For a moment,” he continued, Mr. Hamed 
had not the remotest idea of my intention. He 
sat there looking moody enough, and intently 
staring down into the waters beneath him ; but it 
was only for a moment. Then he turned and saw 
me. He seemed to understand in a minute what 
I was up to, and you should have seen him hound 
ofi that tree trunk. He jumped as though he had 
been shot, and took to his heels as if a wild beast 
were chasing him for his life. In vain I shouted 
after him and waved my hands to him to return, 
laughing all the while at the humor of it, but he 
went on entirely unheeding, and in a couple of 
seconds was quite out of sight. I had often heard 
that Arabs and fellows of that sort, you know. 


ITS GENII APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS. 53 


objected to sitting as models, but I never saw a 
practical exemplication of it before.’^ 

“ Did he come back ? ” asked Miss Shandon. 

“ 0 yes,” returned Parks, sending up a cloud of 
blue smoke from his briarwood, “ he came back 
as suddenly as he left. I had almost given up all 
hope of seeing the fellow again when he suddenly 
appeared at my elbow. I was just getting out the 
luncheon when he arrived to share it with me.” 

Mrs. Lord marvelled not a little at this narra- 
tion. Here was to her convincing proof that 
what she had seen and heard at the beach was no 
flight of fancy nor stretch of imagination. In her 
calmer moments, romantic as she was, she had 
been inclined to doubt somewhat her own senses. 
It was all so extraordinary, so improbable, that 
even though she had seemingly had occular and 
auricular demonstration, still she at times fancied 
that perhaps she had only been dreaming dreams 
and had seen visions. The testimony of the artist 
was all that was needed, however, to put to flight 
the last of these lingering doubts, and she now 
gave herself up wholly to a thorough belief in 
the reality of what seemed so utterly unreal. 

The days dragged wearily by and the mails 
continued to bring letters for everybody and from 
everybody except for Mrs. Lord from her hus- 
band. The wife grew successively uneasy, wor- 


54 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


ried and annoyed. She had now written to Mr. 
Lord several times but had received not a single 
word in reply, and the repeated disappointments 
had had an^dhing hut a salutary effect upon her 
highly- wrought nervous organization, while the 
continued presence of Ben Hamed in the house 
contributed not a little to her unrest. At times 
she longed for the soothing influence which she 
so vividly remembered to have experienced while 
wearing the moonstone, and, again and again, she 
was tempted once more to wear it, if only for a 
brief respite from the loneliness and dread of her 
present condition. 

It thus happened one afternoon that Mrs. Lord, 
while suflering from neuralgic pain injhe tem- 
ples — a pain that had driven her almost distracted 
— forgetful of her vow never to yield to the ring’s 
enigmatic influence, and neither asking nor caring 
where or how the Arab had disposed himself, 
flew to her jewel box, lifted the moonstone from 
its hiding place and passed it over the joints of 
her taper finger. As she did so she was sensible 
of a tingling sensation that ran along her arm and 
seemed to send an electric message to every part 
of her being. In a brief moment the throbbing 
pain in her temples had fled away, the mental 
strain which she had been undergoing was almost 
instantly relieved, and the same sense of peaceful 


ITS GENII APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS. 55 


rest and quiet which had come upon her when 
she last had worn the ring was renewed, with even 
more pronounced and pleasing efiect. 

“ It is worth a thousand menthol pencils,’’ she 
said, and then she laughed as she had not laughed 
for weeks before ; and, snatching up a hat from 
the bed, ran gayly down stairs humming merrily 
some light opera air as she went. 

The reaction which had come with the ring was 
like the exhiliarating influence of champagne : 
her spirits were fairly bubbling, and the blood 
which had previously run so slowly through her 
veins now coursed freely and rapidly. She felt 
like dancing for joy, and she would doubtless 
have executed a Highland fling or sailor’s horn- 
pipe on the padded parlor carpet had any one 
been present to extract melody suflicient for the 
performance from the cabinet organ, which was 
the only musical instrument the house afforded. 
As it was, there was seemingly, not a creature 
within sight or hearing, and so Mrs. Lord only 
just glanced into the little parlor as she passed by. 
Then she went out through the low doorway on 
to the piazza, and a moment later was skipping 
lightly down the steps to the river shore. A row- 
boat with the oars placed invitingly in the row- 
locks lay alongside the dock, and into this she 
sprang. She had pushed out and with short, but 
6 


56 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


vigorous strokes for one so slight as she, had 
rowed herself more than half way across the river 
before she noticed that the sky was overcast and 
that a great bank of leaden-gray cloud was being 
piled up in the west. The sun was completely 
hidden and everything indicated rain. Had the 
heavens opened at that moment and the floods 
descended, it is doubtful whether she would have 
been deterred from carrying out the purpose 
which she had in view. An impulse had taken 
possession of her, though she was scarcely aware 
of it, more powerful than any that had yet been 
exercised upon her, and this unrecognized force 
was pushing her on to reach the opposite shore 
at all hazards. Ten minutes more, and she felt 
the bottom of the boat grate on the pebbly beach. 

Still bustling with an energy that was new and 
unusual, she sprang lightly out, and looking about 
until she could find an opening among the laurel 
bushes, she began the ascent of a hill carpeted 
with dead leaves, rank with underbru'sh and 
thickly overgrown with laurel, cedars, pines and 
scrub oak. By the time she reached the top of 
the bluft' which overlooked the river, the wind was 
blowing a gale and the bank of clouds was 
every minute becoming more ominous. She paid 
little heed to either. A clearing on the very 
edge of a clifi*, softly spread with pine needles. 


ITS GENII APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS. 57 


seemed to offer her an inviting resting-place and 
there she sat down. The breeze swept river, now 
dotted with white-caps and reflecting the darkened 
heavens, surged by many feet below her. Custis’s 
house was a mere -white speck among the dark 
foliage of the far-distant opposite shore. 

Mrs. Lord seemed utterly unconscious of all 
these forerunners of what promised to he a heavy 
thunder shower. She sat there as calmly and 
contentedly as though in her own little parlor in 
Washington Place, while the river’s waves beat a 
fierce tattoo on the gravel beach below and the 
wind played a wild, weird melody as it swept 
through the woody growth that reached from the 
top of the bluff to shore at its fooL Her eyes 
were fixed upon the moonstone that adorned her 
finger and which was now glaring with a white 
light altogether out of proportion to its size. 
Suddenly, as she gazed, there was a dazzling, 
blinding flash and the ground beneath her seemed 
to shake with the crashing and reverberating 
peal of thunder which almost instantly followed 
it. To her the flash seemed to come from the 
ring rather than from the yellowish-gray clouds 
which were scurrying seaward in great unbroken 
masses that every moment promised a deluge, and 
in the thunder she heard only the strong, sonorous 
voice of its genii, Ben Hamed, whom she now saw 


58 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


standing before her, looking, she dreamed, more 
beautiful in his Oriental picturesqueness than ever 
mortal man had looked before. 

An absorbing desire to fall upon his neck, to 
bury her face in his bosom, and to pour into his 
ears the story of her woe took possession of her. 
The sense of repugnance, approaching to detesta- 
tion, which she experienced, when meeting the 
Arab while the ring was not upon her finger, was 
utterly forgotten, and in its place had come a 
heart-thrilling, and soul-threatening passion that, 
if encouraged, would doubtless lead her to‘ lengths 
that in the future she would never cease to regret. 
It was the utterance of the Arab that recalled her in 
some slight degree to the peril of her position and 
gave her a sort of hazy, misty warning of the 
brink upon which she was standing. 

“ Come !” he said, approaching her, his gray 
eyes full of admiration and glowing with a pas- 
sionate light that spoke of ungratified desire, 
‘‘Come! It is Allah’s will, and the time is now 
ripe !” 

He spoke loudly enough for his voice to be 
heard above the roaring of the tempest w^hich was 
sweeping down upon them. Mrs. Lord made no 
answer to his entreaty, and he came a step nearer. 

“Allah has sent the storm,” he said, “ to bear 
Ben Hamed and his bride back to the fair and 


ITS GENII APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS. 59 


laughing land on the borders of the great sea. 

‘‘ Come,” he added, ‘‘ we have no time to spare.” 

He stooped and caught her hy the arm and 
would have lifted her to her feet had she not 
stoutly resisted. Her will, her common sense, 
the fruit of her early ethical training, were assert- 
ing themselves — feebly it is true — hut with suf- 
ficient power to dispute at least for the moment, 
the outlawry of the Oriental’s proposition. 

You forget I am a wife,” she said, hy way of 
protest, her words scarely audible amid the noise 
made by the creaking of the wind-bended trees, 
the throbbing pulses of the frenzied river, and the 
rumble and roar of the thunder. She spoke 
gently and without the least sign of excitement, 
still unmindful of the storm, still only partially 
heeding the compromising danger of her position. 

^‘And am I not a husband?” asked Ben 
Hamed, with an air of assurance, as if this 
should be an all-sufficient answer to a foolish 
and weightless argument. 

At that moment a deep roar of thunder, fol- 
lowed quickly upon a sharp-lined fiash of light- 
ning, that seemed for the instant to open the gates 
of heaven and afford a glimpse of the inconceiva- 
ble glory wfithin. 

<‘Come! It is Allah’s summons,” the Arab 
continued tp urge, but Mrs, Lord moved n.Otj 


60 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


Finding now that it was useless to attempt to 
force his would-be bride to her feet, he threw him- 
self at full length upon the ground by her side ; 
and, while the battle between the clouds waxed 
hotter, more fierce and more tumultuously noisy, 
with, strange to relate, up to this time, an entire 
absence of rain, the Oriental poured into the not- 
wholly-unwilling ear of his heart’s enslaver a tale 
of the most passionate love and devotion. 

Ben Hamed’s soul has yearned day and night, 
moon after moon, sun after sun, for the light that 
springs into those sweet eyes from the depths of 
that soul that is his paradise,” he said. ‘‘ 0,- loved 
one, do not deny me ! ” he pleaded, ‘‘Allah has 
willed it. Has he not sent me to thee many 
leagues over seas and across rivers, from the far 
East to the land where the sun loves to dwell ? 
Has he not put love into thy Jieart and into mine? 
Has he not given us to each other ? Speak, dear 
one,” he urged, drawing himself close to her, 
“ tell me what thy heart says — tell me truly that 
I am thy heart’s mate ; that my soul is thy soul 
and that thy soul is mine.” 

The wind which had been blowing so strongly 
sank almost to a whisper as he spoke, and the 
river’s waves for the nonce seemed to be playing 
a lullaby on the pebbly beach. Even the thunder 
joined in the Arab’s pleading and moaned plain- 


ITS GENII APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS. 61 


lively. The elements were apparently conspiring 
to further his cause. 

“ But my husband ! ’’ the woman protested, 
prone to yield, while her conscience slumbrous, 
yet not wholly insensate, mildly chided her for 
her pronene§s. 

“ In Tunis,” argued Ben Hamed, ‘‘ the wife who 
is childless is put away by her husband. Zahra 
is childless, and when Ben Hamed returns he will 
put her away. Thou and thou only shall walk 
beside him in his roof garden and in his court- 
yard; for thee shall his pomegranites and his 
apricots grow, for thee shall his fountains make 
pleasant music, and for thee shall his slaves fetch 
and carry. Why should his heart’s joy hesitate 
to leave him who has neglected her? Why 
'should she not rather fly to the heart that yearns 
for her, that oflers her all its garnered w^ealth ot 
passion and devotion. Come, come, my love, my 
idol,” and his arm stole about her waist and drew 
her close to his breast. 

The passionate pleading of his voice charmed 
her even as the eyes of the wily serpent are wont 
to charm the dove. Her heart beat tumultuously, 
her cheeks flamed with the hot blood that fairly 
gushed through her veins. Her head sank upon 
the Arab’s shoulder; his face bent over hers. 
Victory — exultant and confident was reflected 


62 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


from his every feature. Eavenously his lips 
sought her lips. She felt his warm hreath upon 
her cheeks. 

At that instant the storm, which had been 
coming nearer and nearer, broke in fury above 
their heads. The hush which had, for a moment, 
been over all nature was but the treacherous 
peace which foreruns the hurricane. A blaze ot 
electricity seemed to envelop everything in the 
dazzling whiteness of its blinding light, and with 
it came such a crackling, deafening cannonade of 
thunder as to threaten the demolition of the hill 
on which the couple were reclining. 

Ben Hamed drew back in affright and Mrs. 
Lord trembled in every limb. The rain now 
began to fall in big, splashing drops ; the wind, 
which was once more blowing like mad, forcing 
it in through the leafy canopy which aftbrded 
little if any protection. Ben Hamed rose to his 
feet and stretched out his hands invitingly towards 
the woman. She was on the point of yielding. 
Already she had gathered her legs up under 
her and was about to rise. Her gaze was still 
fastened upon the man who had gained by somp 
means, she ^sked not ho^ or why, such an influ- 
ence over her, and, as she gazed, she noted that a 
wondi’oiis change had overspread his face, The 
expressiop of passiopate loye apd adoration ha4 


ITS GENII APPEARS AND REAPPEARS. 


63 


instantly given way to one of the most abject and 
cringing terror. His arms dropped to his sides, 
and he retreated backward to the very edge of 
the clitF. Trembling with apprehension Test he 
should fall, she was about to shout to him to be 
careful, when, suddenly, she felt her wrist grasped 
from behind, and the next instant she was jerked 
roughly to her feet. Mad with indignation, she 
turned and looked at the person who had thus 
rudely assailed her, and, to her utter amaze- 
ment and consternation, she saw there, with an 
expression of mingled reproach and joy upon his 
features, the familiar form and face of her hus- 
band. At the same mpment a shrill scream 
echoed amid the rumble of the thunder, the roar 
of the wind, and the swash of the waves. Whe- 
ther it was the cry of an affrighted hawk, or the 
despairing shriek of the Arab is a question which 
must ever remain unanswered. 


64 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


YI. 

ITS GENII CHANGES ITS MIND. 

Reproach and Joy were fightingfor the mastery 
of John Lord’s face when his wife looked into it, 
while far down in his heart a battle between 
the forces of Jealously and Trustful Love was 
being waged even more hotly. In fact the 
former engagement was but a skirmish between 
outposts of the latter forces. Reproach being 
enlisted in the cause of Jealously, and Joy being 
a sanguine, venturesome, and brave soldier from 
the ranks of Trustful Love. hTow the one seemed 
to have the advantage, and now the other, and 
thus the struggle was prolonged even for many 
hours after Mr. Lord had succeeded in getting 
his wife safely across the river and into the 
shelter of Custis’s quaint hut hospitable hostelry. 
They had much to tell each other, these two, 
between whom there had never before been so 
much as a misunderstanding and whose wedded 
faith and happiness were now on the verge of 
simultaneously running awreck on the reef of 
superstition. In the excitement of that episode 


ITS GENII CHANGES ITS MIND. 


65 


on the bluff, the ring which had been the seed, 
root, and branch of all their trouble had been 
wrenched from the lady’s finger quite unknown 
to her and had been lost, and with the ring had 
gone all of the Arab’s fascination for her — all his 
eerie influence, leaving her soul-sick, self-reproach- 
ful and consciende-stricken. She would fain have 
told her husband everything: have unburdened 
her heart to. him and have trusted fully that he 
would forgive her folly, take her once more into 
his entire confidence and love her as of old ; but, 
when about to act upon this impulse, unfortunately 
for both. Reproach got the better of the skirmish 
in Mr. Lord’s face; she remembered his practical, 
prosaic nature and his lack of sympathy for 
anything approaching the superstitious, and she 
was*silent. 

She still felt some resentment against her 
husband for having paid no attention to her nu- 
merous letters beseeching him to return to her, 
and, when he ventured a chiding word for her 
wholly unaccountable conduct of the afternoon, 
instead of making a confession, she replied curtly 
with a series of questions : “ Why,” she asked, 
“ did you neglect me ? Why were my letters 
unheeded and unanswered ? Why did you leave 
me in the very path of temptation ?” 

They had eaten their supper in silence, and. 


66 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


the storm having passed over meanwhile, they 
were now seated together on a rustic bench in a 
little grove some distance below the house on the 
grassy lawn overlooking the river. The moon, 
which was at its full, was filtering its soft silvery 
light through the fluttering leaves of the trees 
whose branches spread over them. As yet Mr. 
Lord had offered no word to explain his sudden 
appearance on the bluft at the very moment when 
his presence was most needed, and Mrs. Lord had 
expressed neither disappointment nor pleasure at 
what had happened. 

I am rather surprised,” Mr. Lord said in a 
voice unusually hard for him, but in which his 
wife, who knew his every inflection, detected a 
little tremor of injury, “ that you should imagine 
for one moment that I would willingly or know- 
ingly neglect you. You might, I think, have 
made some excuse for me; have looked on the 
bright side, rather than the dark; have believed 
me still loyal, until you had proved me otherwise. 
Instead of jumping at once to the conclusion that 
I had received your letters and declined or delayed 
answering them, would it not have been more 
in keeping with the part of a loving and trustful 
wife to have concluded that they had not reached 
me ?” 

Mrs. Lord could but admit the justice of this 


ITS GENII CHANGES ITS MIND. 67 

plea, and her own sense of guilt and unworthiness 
assumed, on the instant, proportions that made ex- 
planation on her part ten-fold more difficult than 
before. She was thoroughly ashamed of herself, 
and what she had hitherto considered simply an im- 
propriety and in a degree justifiable, now appeared 
to her in the light of her husband’s defence, as a 
most heinous crime. How, under these conditions, 
she was to tell him what, when she came calmly to 
review the several phases of her meeting and 
association with Ben Hamed, seemed more like a 
bit of fairy lore than practical common-sense, she 
could not imagine, and so she maintained an 
apparently moody silence and made matters still 
worse by her reticence. 

“For my part,” continued Mr. Lord, after 
waiting a few seconds for his wife to speak, “ in 
spite of the seemingly very compromising situa- 
tion in which I discovered you this afternoon, I 
have reserved my judgment until I shall have 
heard what you have to say for yourself” 

Jealousy just now had the upper hand in the 
conflict, and Mr. Lord knew it. His sympathies, 
however, were all on the other side, and he 
longed for reinforcements which his wife alone 
could send, and which would, he felt sure, turn 
the tide in favor of Trustful Love, and result, he 
hoped, in a complete routing of the enemy. 

7 


68 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


And did you not receive my letter ?” Mrs. Lord 
asked, at length, still endeavoring to evade the is- 
sue. 

' N'ot until yesterday, ” was the repl}'. You 
see, I was away for weeks from the post-town I 
gave you as my address, traveling about the coun- 
try looking for specimens, and, stupidly enough, 
I did not leave instructions to have my mail for- 
warded. When T returned I found your letters 
awaiting me, and I started immediately to come to 
you. I travelled night and day, and reached here 
to find that you had gone out in the face of a 
threatening thunder storm. Do you wonder that 
I was surprised? I asked Neetie where you. had 
gone, and she told me she had seen you rowing 
across the river which was then a raging torrent. 
I was more astoni^hed than I tell you ; but there 
was no time for conjectures as to the whys and 
wherefores, and so I borrowed a water-proof for 
you from Neetie and started after you. It was a 
pretty hard pull, but, thank Heaven ! I arrived in 
time. 

“ I suppose, dear, I should have written while I 
_ was away,” he added, but I was so fagged out 
when night came that I was glad to crawl to bed, 
and in the morning I was up bright and early and 
away again.” 

At this Mrs. Lord once more began to justify 


ITS GENII CHANGES ITS MIND. 


69 


herself. Her husband, she said, had been think- 
ing more of rocks and stones than he had of her. 
He had been unable to spare from them even ten 
minutes in one day, during a period of three 
weeks, in which to write her a line, and, if she 
had in the meanwhile forgotten for a few hours her 
duty as a wife and stepped aside from the straight 
line of conjugal propriety, it w^as his fault as much 
as hers, and she told him so. 

‘‘ I may have been somewhat to blame,” the ac- 
cused replied, ‘‘ and for the sake of argument, my 
dear, I will admit that I should have found time 
to write to you ; but, sins of omission are usually 
considered a grade more pardonable than sins ot 
commission, and while mine belonged to the for- 
mer class, yours was certainly of the latter. It 
your husband did wrong it was only because he 
plit off until to-morrow what he should have done 
to-day, while you, it seems, committed an error, 
deliberately, with your eyes open, and with a de- 
sire to gratify a spirit of revenge which had pos- 
session of you.” 

“ You are wrong, Mr. Lord,” the wife an- 
swered, altogether wrong,” and she spoke in a 
nonchalant tone that was very exasperating to 
her husband, who was thoroughly in earnest. 
“If I have committed what you call an error, 
and^ it’s very probable I have, it was done neither 


70 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


deliberately nor in a spirit of revenge. It was 
done because I could not help, it; because the 
moonstone ring which you gave me possesses an 
influence over me stronger than my own will.” 

Mr. Lord turned sharply and looked into his 
wife’s face. Was she mad, or was she trifling 
with him ? This was the question, the answer to 
which he would read in her eyes. As for her, she 
had passed the outer door leading up to her con- 
fession and she was somewhat appalled at the 
thought that she had now gone too far to turn 
back, and that, much as she should desire not to 
proceed, her husband would certainly force her to 
go on. 

It thus happened that Mr. Lord found in his 
wife’s face no sign of frivolity or laughter. She 
was very much in earnest, and he discovered it at 
a glance. 

“ Your words need explai^ation, my dear,” was 
all he said, and Mrs. Lord, hesitating no longer, 
plunged at once into her story, telling everything, 
from the flrst time she had seen the vision in the 
milky depths of the gem, up to the sudden ap- 
pearance of Ben Hamed on the bluflp that after- 
noon ; her husband listening with unwavering 
attention to every syllable of the tale. 

When she had finished, he took her hand in his 
and spoke kindly and reassuringly, for her vt)ice 


ITS GENII CHANGES ITS MIND. 


71 


had trembled with emotion as she had related her 
experience across the river, and at times had pre- 
saged tears. 

‘‘ This that you tell me is very remarkable, my 
darling,” he said, “ and you will forgive me, I 
know, if I tell you that I fear your vivid im- 
agination has this time carried you farther than was 
at all safe for your own honor or for mine. While 
I have not the faintest notion that you do not 
thoroughly believe all that you have told me, I 
must tell you, at once and firmly, that you have 
been deceived, that this fellow you call Ben 
Hamed is a scoundrelly charlatan, and that I 
never want you to speak to him again.” 

“ But the ring he wears !” suggested Mrs. Lord, 

it is identically the same as mine. I’m sure there 
can be no imagination about that.” 

“ Possibly not,” replied her husband, “ but I 
am inclined to be incredulous, and, until I see it 
for myself, I shall continue to think that there has 
been some chicanery about the ring and that your 
romanticism has got the better of your perceptive 
faculties.” 

The discussion was continued for several hours? 
and when at length husband and wife returned to 
the house they were no nearer having reached an 
agreement as to what Mrs Lord claimed was 
nothing less than a phenomenon, and as to what 
7 * 


72 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


Mr. Lord looked upon as merely a remarkable 
stretch of a tensile imagination, than they had been 
at the beginning. Trustful Love had won the 
battle in Mr. Lord’s heart ; Jealously had been 
put to flight, and Joy, having achieved the victory 
over Keproach, sat triumphant upon Mr. Lord’s 
now smiling features. 

The ring had been lost, and, in spite of its 
considerable cost and great beauty, it is quite 
certain that neither Mrs. Lord nor her husband 
regretted in the slightest degree its disappearance, 
while both hoped and prayed from their soul’s 
depths that they would never see it again. It had 
come very near shattering the entire fabric of 
their wedded faith and happiness, and, whether or 
not it possessed the enigmatic properties which 
Mrs. Lord asserted it did, it was better lost and 
forgotten than where it could ever again ofler 
temptation to a woman only too prone to yield to 
what was to her the seductive witchery of its moon- 
like gleams. 

It was not strange, therefore, that both Mr. 
and Mrs. Lord were more chagrinned than pleased 
when, on the second day after the events just 
recorded, Miss Shandon, bright with smiles that 
made her crow’s-feet more than usually promi- 
nent, came dancing up the path from the river, 
holding forth to their disappointed and unwel- 


ITS GENII CHANGES ITS MIND. 


73 


coming I view the bit of jewelry which they had 
with so much satisfaction believed lost beyond re- 
trieving. 

“ And to think,” she added after explaining 
how she had been spending the morning at ‘‘ the 
bluff” and had found it half-buried in pine need- 
les, ‘‘ and to think that you should have lost it, 
Mrs. Lord, and said nothing about it to anyone. 
Had it been mine I should have written out 
notices about the loss, ofiering a suitable reward 
to the finder, and posted them in conspicuous 
places all over the village,” 

“ And so you think you should have a reward, 
do you Miss Shandon?” Mr. Lord said, with a 
laugh that was meant to hide his vexation. “ What 
would you consider a suitable one ?” 

“ 0, I didn’t mean that,” the elderly maiden 
giggled, as she slipped the ring upon her finger, 
and’, holding her hand off from her gazed admi- 
ringly upon the jewel that decked it. “ It is very 
beautiful, indeed. I have always admired it ever 
since I first saw you with it, Mrs. Lord, and,” she 
added, “ if you would only allow me to wear it 
for a little while I should feel that I had been more 
than repaid for finding it.” 

“ 0, do wear it,” Mrs. Lord exclaimed, and her 
words mingled with Mr. Lord’s “ Why, certainly, 
by all means.-” 


74 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


In fact both were so glad to have Miss Shandon 
wear the ring that they bounded to accept her 
proposition with a precipitance that was calcu- 
lated to arouse suspicion. Mr. Lord desired 
to prove by this that his wife had been carried 
away by her fancy, and she, in turn, was equally 
as desirous of proving by it that there was more 
in the moonstone than could be accounted for on 
any theory save that of supernatural agency. 

Ben Hamed had not been seen since his dis- 
appearance over the edge of the bluff two days 
before, and Mrs. Lord feared that he had been 
killed by his fall. Her feeling now towards him 
was one of repugnance, rather than admiration or 
affection, but her humanity was strong and asser- 
tive, and she was oppressed with a dread apprehen- 
sion that his body, cold and lifeless, was lying in 
the bushes below the plateau upon which he had 
so ardently proclaimed his passion. As to the 
correctness or falsity of her surmises, however, she 
was not to be left very long in doubt, for, on that 
very afternoon, after having loaned Miss Shandon 
her moonstone, she discovered the Arab in all the 
vigor of robust health, apparently not in the 
slightest degree injured by his abrupt descent from 
the cliff, sitting beside that gushing maiden on one 
of the rustic seats that dotted the lawn and over- 
looked the river. 


ITS GENII CHANGES ITS MIND. 


75 


This was the first time that she had ever known 
Ben Hamed to address a word to Miss Shandon, 
and she at once attributed it to the fact that the 
moonstone now reposed upon that lady’s finger. 
That she had permitted her admiring gaze to rest 
on it for a considerable period and had thus 
attracted the genii of the ring, Mrs. Lord most 
firmly believed ; and in this she saw a bit of evi- 
dence which she would not fail to make use of in 
support of her argument with her husband as to 
the occult powers possessed by the gem he had 
given her. 

Before many days she had many other bits ot 
evidence of a like character, equally confirmatory 
of her theory and of sufficient strength to have 
convinced, she thought, any man under Heaven, 
save her matter-of-fact and prosaic spouse. Mr. 
Lord listened attentively to all she told him ; he 
looked when she told him to look, and he even 
sank his pride and his sense of honor so far as to do 
some eavesdropping at her suggestion ; but he ac- 
counted for everything on purely natural grounds, 
and not one of her revelations shook in the least 
degree his conviction that her romanticism was 
responsible for all the wonders of the ring and the 
world which it had opened to her view. That the 
Arab should have transferred his attentions from 
Mrs. Lord to Miss Shandon was not at all remark- 


76 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


able in his eyes, inasmuch as Miss Shandon was un- 
protected, while his return had given to Mrs. Lord 
one who, “the Heathen” very well knew, would 
guard her against insulting protestations of affec- 
tion. Further, Miss Shandon - who was quite as 
romantic, if a trifle less imaginative than Mrs. 
Lord, encouraged the Oriental in his most passion- 
ate outbursts, and, under the circumstances, Mr. 
Lord argued in contravention of his wife’s ex- 
pressed views, it was not to be wondered at that 
the two were always together. It was by no 
means clear to Mr. Lord that the fellow could sud- 
denly appear and disappear at will or project him- 
self instantaneously considerable distances. Mrs. 
Lord held firmly to this belief, and endeavored to 
prove that she had reason to believe so, but none 
of her proofs were, as has been said, convincing. 
Her husband had an explanation for nearly every 
one of the instances she brought to his consider- 
ation, and, when the case seemed utterly unan- 
swerable, he declared that the fellow was merely a 
clever trickster or juggler who had learned some 
of the black art of the Orient, and was making use 
of it to mystify the ready-and-willing-to-be-hum- 
bugged women of the Western hemisphere. 

Miss Shandon was certainly very much infatu- 
ated with the juggler, if such he was, and she was 
not loth to talk of what she was pleased to call 


ITS GENII CHANGES ITS MIND. 


77 


her conquest. Her chances of securing a husband 
had been reduced to the minimum by her wealth 
of years and her poverty of attractions, and she 
snapped at the Arab as a snapping mackerel snaps 
at a hook. 

‘‘I know I am a foolish girl,” she said with a 
giggle, addressing Mrs. Lord one day, about a 
week after having found the ring, “ hut do you 
know I have consented to marry Ben Hamed, and 
go with him to his home in Tunis ! He is a most 
charming man, and his description of his residence 
is something to dream of. I have so few friends 
here in America that I shall not mind going in the 
least, and I do love him so much.” 

Mrs. Lord felt a pang^ of self-reproach as she 
heard this, and she was on the verge of asking for 
the return of her ring then and there, believing, as 
she did, that it, and it only, was responsible for the 
existing state of affairs ; but her good intentions 
were nipped in the bud by Miss Shandon herself, 
who said : I am going to leave here at the end 
of next week, Mrs. Lord, and if you will let me 
wear your moonstone until then, I will send you a 
lovely present when I get to Tunis.” 

Mrs. Lord laughed. 

“ Thank you very much,” she said, I am sure 
you are very welcome to wear the ring as long as 
you choose. Had it not been for you I don’t 


78 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


suppose I should ever have so much as heard of it 
again.” 

In the early evening Miss Shandon and the Arab 
went for a row over the rippling waters of the pic- 
turesque river. Ben Hamed had learned to use 
the oars with considerable skill, and as he bent 
hack and forth, pulling a strong, steady stroke, the 
little boat shot along with an easy, graceful^ rapid 
motion that was just what his passenger most thor- 
oughly enjoyed. Between each flash of the oar 
blades in the dying sun-glow he whispered words 
of love to the woman in the stern, who sat with a 
pleased smile upon her somewhat withered coun- 
tenance, drinking in his compliments and his en- 
dearments with the greediness that comes of long 
fasting. How and then she allowed her hand to 
hang over the side, and her fingers to play in the 
water that washed along with a swish and a swirl 
as the boat cut through or danced over the tiny 
wavelets. 

Suddenly she drew her hand back with a little 
cry of dismay. 

‘‘ It is gone !” she exclaimed, and her eyes had a 
frightened look — I have lost it ! Oh ! What shall 
I do ? ” 

The moonstone ring had slipped from her 
finger into the water, and by this time was 
doubtless buried in the soft black mud at the^ 
river’s bottom. 


ITS GENII CHANGES ITS MIND. 


79 


She leaned over the boat’s side and gazed 
longingly into the darkening tide. The last glow 
of the setting sun had departed and dusk was 
already giving way to gloom. Every thought of 
her companion had gone with the lost ring, and 
her whole desire now was to recover the costly 
jewel which, she could but admit to herself, it had 
been most foolish of her to borrow. She knelt 
upon the stern seat and fixed her eyes upon the 
spot where she believed it had disappeared, turn- 
ing her back upon the rower. She no longer 
heard the impassioned words, she no longer 
heard the splash of his oars ; her seven senses 
seemed to have sunk to the bottom of the river 
with the borrowed moonstone, and she knelt and 
gazed as one suddenly stricken dumb. 

The cold night-wind blowing in from the sea, 
an hour later, brought her back to herself. She 
rose from her kneeling posture, her limbs stifi* 
from the prolonged strain of her position. The 
stars had come out and ’Were sparkling in the 
dark vault overhead. The lights in the houses on 
shore gleamed through the fringe of trees on the 
river bank towards which the boat was drifting. 
That it was drifting was now apparent, and, 
turning sharply, she saw to her amazement that 
she was its only occupant. Ben Hamed had 
disappeared. 


8 


80 


MBS. lord’s moonstone. 


Whether he had jumped over-board or whether 
he had rowed to shore, landed, and then left her 
to drift, she knew not. His conduct, she con- 
sidered unexplainable, and, strangely enough, so 
strangely that she could not understand it, she 
no longer felt for him the least affedtion. That 
his desertion of her could have wrought this sud- 
den change in her feelings, she would not believe, 
and, when at length she had paddled herself to 
shore and had unburdened her soul to Mrs. Lord, 
she was quite ready to listen to that romatic per- 
son’s story and to accept without question her 
theory as the only one which could account in a 
manner at all satisfactory for the strange and 
unnaturally sudden change in her sentiments. 
She, in turn, told Mrs. Lord many strange things 
as to her experiences while the moonstone was in 
her possession, and these were in turn related to 
Mr. Lord, but without changing in the slightest 
degree his fixed opinions on the subject. 

nevertheless he admitted that he was not sorry 
the ring had at last been lost where it would not 
he likely to be recovered, and he expressed to 
Miss Shandon his hope that she would not be in 
the least troubled because she was the agent who 
was responsible for its losing. He owed her 
thanks rather than reproaches, he said, for the 
ring had clustered about it anything hut pleasant 


ITS GENII CHANGES ITS MIND. 


81 


memories for him, and he hoped never to see it 
again. 

As for Ben Hamed, Miss Shandon was the last 
person who saw him. He never returned to Cus- 
tis’s and his account still stands on the hooks of 
the Captain with debits for the six weeks of his 
stay and not a single credit. There was a suspic- 
ion when, after several days from the date of his 
desertion of Miss Shandon he did not return, that 
he had plunged from the boat ’after the ring, and 
had been drowned. His companion admitted 
that while in the dazed condition in which she 
had been for over an hour he might have done so 
entirely unknown to her, and she rather favored 
the theory. Mrs. Lord also looked upon the 
river as the Arab’s grave, and the fact that his 
curious bronze-bound chest bad disappeared 
mysteriously and suspiciously from his room be- 
fore anyone thought of going there to look for 
him, did not tend in any manner to shake her 
faith. 

Ho one thought it worth while to drag the river, 
however. Captain Custis agreeing fully with Mr. 
Lord, who held firmly, in his stolid, matter-of-fact 
way, that the idea of the fellow having drowned 
himself was ridiculous. 

He was merely a clever scoundrel,” he was 
wont to add, when speaking of the affair, and 


82 


MRS. lord’s moonstone. 


there was no more of the supernatural about him 
than there is about me. He came back to the 
house at dead of night, threw his box from the 
window, and followed it himself by way of the 
stair. I feel as well satisfied of that as if I had 
seen him do it.” 


HOW BELFORD WON. 


There was something very snug and cosy about 
the quarters in which Mr. Allison Belford found 
himself at five o’clock on a certain afternoon in 
late June. He was seated on a softly-cushioned di- 
van of the color known as crushed strawberry; there 
were curtains near-by of gendarme blue, and there 
were bevelled mirrors set in delicately carved satin- 
wood, in which he could, without so much as turn- 
ing his head, get a full view of his reflection. 
What he saw therein was a passably good-looking 
young man of five and twenty, attired in a light 
gray suit of Scotch tweed, and wearing a traveling 
cap of the style sometimes called a fore-and-aft. 
The young man had just taken a scented scrap of 
paper from his pocket and was reading what was 
written thereon. The writing was large and strag- 
gling, and the words were very few, but they were 
evidently of considerable import. Mr. Belford had 
received that scrap of paper a half-dozen hours 
ag(^. It had been handed to him just after he had 
written his name and the name of the city whence^ 
he came, upon the register of the Grand Pacific 
8 * ( 83 ) 


84 


HOW BELFORD WON. 


Hotel, and it was so mandatory in tone that he had, 
then and there, without a moment’s hesitation, de- 
cided to retrace his journey from New York to the 
Lakes by the train which the missive indicated. In 
pursuance of this decision he was now ensconced 
in one of the drawing-rooms of the Pennsylvania’s 
vestibuled train — its New York and Chicago 
Limited — which was, wdth throbbing pulse, at that , 
moment drawing out of the Union depot onto the 
Fort Wayne road. As the five cars, hooded and 
linked together into the form of a great, long ser- 
pent, with a mammoth locomotive — wfith eye and 
heart of fire, and breath of steam and smoke — for 
a head, swept swiftly and smoothly over the steel 
rails, and glided sinuously along the shore of Lake 
Michigan, Mr. Belford replaced his letter, which 
he had now read for the fiftieth time, in his pocket, 
and started for a walk through the python’s body, 
glancing from side to side as he went as though in 
search of some one. Nor was he very long, ap- 
parently, in discovering the person for whom he 
looked. Although he gave no glance of recogni- 
tion in the direction of a certain fair young wo- 
man who occupied a place midway down the car 
in which his own quarters for the trip were situa- 
ted, it was evident from the fact that his scrutinizing 
gaze relaxed after passing her, that it was she he 
*had started in quest of. A close-fitting Newmarket 


HOW BELFORD WON. 


85 


coat of a soft, brown color enveloped her slender, 
girlish figure, and an English turban of the same 
hue crowned her shapely head. There was laugh- 
ter in her long-lashed blue eyes, and in her prettily- 
bowed mouth, and as Mr. Belford passed on his 
way down the car this laughter seemed in immi- 
nent danger of breaking forth into a merry, rippling 
peal. That it did not was certainly due to a great 
efibrt, and the efibrt was in turn due, in a great 
measure, to the presence beside her of an elderly, 
thick-set man, with ruddy cheeks, who had eyes 
like hers, and who was unmistakably her father. 

An hour later Mr. Belford, whether by chance 
or design does not matter, was sitting opposite 
the young woman and the elderly gentlemen in 
the dining car. Several times during the process 
of soup-eating, his eyes and the girl’s had met, and 
on each occasion the laugh had seemed about to 
get the better of the latter’s will ; but each time 
she had either conquered the impulse, or obtained 
relief by turning to her companion and making 
a remark which she had used as an excuse for her 
levity. The dinner served was irreproachable. 
The service was excellent and the cuisine superb. 
It was a dinner calculated to put a man on good 
terms with himself and his fellows, and it was in 
no small degree owing to it, doubtless, that when, 
after it was over and the two gentlemen met in 


HOW BELFORD WON. 


the combined library and smoking car, they fell 
to chatting in the most natural way in the 
world. 

‘‘ A marvelous train, this I” remarked the girl’s 
father, who had left his charge to herself and 
was enjoying to the full a fragrant Havana. 
“ One can be as comfortable here as in one’s own 
home, I take it !” - ^ 

Mr. Belford agreed with him. 

‘‘Eailroad enterprise has brought the coast 
much near^ to Chicago than it used to be. I can 
remember the time when it was a great under- 
taking to transport one’s family to the seaside for 
the Summer, but now, with such a train as this, 
w^hy it’s nothing at all.” 

“ Very true,” Mr. Belford assented, sending up. 
a cloud of smoke to join the clouds that were 
already afloat above his head. Do I understand 
that you are bound for one of the summer re- 
sorts ?” 

Yes,” returned the other, “ I’m taking my 
daughter to Long Branch for the month of July. 
She has been at school in the East and since she 
came back to Chicago, nothing would do but I 
must take her to Elberon for the Summer.” 

And you being an indulgent father, Mr. — I beg 
your pardon, you did not mention your name?” 

“ Leavett ! and yours ?” 


HOW BELFOED WON. 


87 


Belford,” replied the young naan, I was 
about to remark that you, being an indulgent 
father, Mr. Leavett, could not refuse such a 
charming daughter’s wishes.” 

‘^Well,” responded Leavett, as he threw his 
head back and took a long pull at his cigar, I’m 
not as indulgent as you may suppose,” and there 
the discussion of the relations of father and 
daughter came to an end, if the conversation did 
not. 

In a little while it branched off onto the sub- 
ject of ceramics brought up by the rich display 
on the book cases and brackets of the luxuriously- 
furnished car in which they were rushing through 
the night, and from that it trended to other art 
works and finally to prints — line engravings, 
etchings and mezzotints, in which Mr. Leavett 
proved to be a connoisseur. Mr. Belford was 
evidently well posted on the subject and he talked 
so intelligently and well regarding Albert Durers 
and Woollets, and the long line between, that he 
quite won the gentleman’s admiration. 

In a word, the conversation was so pleasant and 
alluring to Mr. Leavett that the time sped by un- 
noted, and before he was aware of it, it was nine 
o’clock, and the train had stopped for a few 
minutes at Fort Wayne, where the dining car 
was being detached. Then it was that the two 


88 


HOW BELFORD WON. 


men returned to the sleeping car, and then it was 
that Mr. Leavett, who had become so impressed 
with Mr. Belford’s intelligence and gentlemanly 
demeanor as to deem him worthy of the dis- 
tinguished honor, presented him to his daughter, 
Miss Madge Leavett, who received him graciously 
but with the same inclination to laugh that had 
characterized her from the first. 

In spite of this inclination, however, which she 
now no longer restrained. Miss Leavett, proved a 
most delightful girl. She was as bright as a new 
dollar and she was an exceedingly agreeable con- 
versationalist. There were, now and then, remarks 
exchanged between her and Mr. Bedford, which 
were not caught by her father, or if they were, 
were not understood, for the reason that they did 
not want them to be, but this was managed so 
adroitly that Mr. Leavett did not deem it indec- 
orous, and in the end Mr. Belford further in- 
gratiated himself by insisting that Miss Leavett 
should for the rest of the trip occupy the drawing- 
room which he had secured, while he took the 
berth in the body of the car which had been en- 
gaged for her. 

The following morning the trio breakfasted 
together off Haviland china in the dining car 
which had been taken on at Pittsburgh, and 
during the forenoon, the better part of which Mr, 


HOW BELFORD WON. 


89 


Leavett spent with the Smoky City’s newspapers 
in the library, Mr. Belford and Miss Madge, in 
the seclusion of the cosy little drawing-room 
where the balmy June breeze rustled the silken 
hangings, and the sun-light came in a flood, grew 
wonderfully w^ell acquainted in a seemingly mar- 
vellously shorl time, even going to the extent of 
holding each other’s hands, and, it must be con- 
fessed, now and then exchanging kisses on the sly. 

So much engrossed were they that they scarcely 
noted the Horse Shoe Curve around which the 
train swept, each moment revealing a new picture 
in the glorious panorama of nature. 

The afternoon, however, Mr. Belford devoted 
to Mr. Leavett. Cigars were again the excuse 
for an hour or two in the smoking car, and the 
two gentlemen once more plunged into a discus- 
sion of art topics. By a clever turn the younger 
man switched the elder from the ideal to the real, 
and then it was of Miss Madge they talked. 

“ You said last evening,” Belford went on, 
“ if I remember correctly, that you were not so 
indulgent a father as I might suppose. How, 
from what I have seen, I am disposed to combat 
that theory. Why, my dear sir, you are indul- 
gence itself.” 

‘‘Pardon me,” replied Mr. Leavett, removing 
his cigar from between his lips, “ you are mistaken, 


90 


HOW BELFORD WON. 


and ril prove it to you. I am now taking my 
daughter East, simply because I discovered since 
her return from boarding school that she is head 
over heels in love with a young man, the brother 
of one of her schoolmates, who, I also learned, 
was about to come West in order to be near her. 
How did I find it out? Til tell you : By ac- 
cident one of this fellow’s letters fell into my 
hands. It w^as full of romantic twaddle, but it 
explained what I had been puzzled to understand. 
Madge from the very day she came home until 
about a week ago, had urged me to take her to 
Long Branch. Then she suddenly changed her 
mind and declared she would rather spend the 
summer in Chicago.” 

‘‘ Ah ! I see,” put in Belford with a smile, he 
wrote her he was coming to see her ?” 

“ Exactly.” 

And you were opposed to her having any one 
in love with her? Surely Mr. Leavett, you 
cannot expect such a beautiful girl as that not to 
attract worshippers !” 

“ I don’t expect it. I suppose she will marry, 
the same as other women, but she’s too young yet 
to think about it, and moreover I was prejudiced 
against this fellow, because I had never seen him 
or heard of him; because I didn’t so much as 
know his name. The letter he wrote was merely 


HOW BELFORD WON. 


91 


signed ‘ Your Own.’ Her own ! Think of it! A 
girl like that. I went to her arid told her what 
I have told you. She wanted to tell me some- 
thing about the fellow, but I wouldn’t let her. 
I don’t want to know about him,” and Mr. 
Leavett grew so hot over it that he gave vent to a 
condemnatory epithet of considerable force. 

Mr. Belford sat silent for a moment and waited 
for him to cool otF. 

“ But the yoilng man w^as not to blame I ” he 
urged at last, you were in Chicago, he was in 
'New York. He could not court Miss Leavett’s 
father before he courted her.” 

“ She was too young, she is too young, to be 
courted at all,” argued the old gentleman. 

She is how much younger than her mother 
when you began operations in that direction ?” 
queried Mr. Belford. 

Mr. Leavett winced. 

That is neither here nor there,” he said if I 
had known the man, and if I had found him a 
gentleman, it might have been difierent. As it is 
I don’t know him, and I don’t want to.” 

Mr. Belford arose. 

“ Pardon me Mr. Leavett,” he said, “ if I con- 
tradict you ; you do know him ! ” and he said it 
in such a way that his companion could not fail to 
comprehend his meaning. 

9 


92 


How BELFORH WON. 


‘‘What!’’ he exclaimed, “ITonsense! You! 
Why I don’t understand the thing at all. I intro- 
duced you to Madge myself.” 

“ You did, yes. • This was my second attempt; 
the first was the wrong method, as you have ex- 
plained to me.” 

“ Still I’m in the dark,” Mr. Leavett urged, 
“ Where did you come from ? How — ” 

“ Perhaps this will explain,” and Mr. Belford 
handed to his sweetheart’s father the scrawl which 
thirty hours before had been handed to him over 
the desk of the Grand Pacific Hotel upon his 
arrival in Chicago. 

My Own, 

Take the Pennsylvania’s vestibuled train back this 
afternoon. We go by it. Papa must be won and you alone 
can do it. We must be strangers until he makes us friends. 

Forever, Your Own. 

P. S. — If you love me win him. 

Mr. Leavett looked up. 

“ You love her,” he said. 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


. I am not likely ever to forget tlie first time I 
met Clement Wynkoop. Every detail of the meet- 
ing, though it has been five years since it occurred, 
is still vividly before me, and even now I seem do 
hear the brassy clangor of the tall, old-fashioned 
clock which stood in the bar-room of the Eagle 
Hotel at Berryville, striking its ten noisy notes, as 
together he and I entered the room that chill No- 
vember night, winking and blinking at the stidden 
change from gloom to glare. He was taller than 
I, and apparently younger. He did not look to 
be over thirty years old, and he was so slightly 
built as to warrant one in describing him as thin — 
but he was not awkward by any means, and his 
thinness seemed to add to, rather than detract from, 
a certain grace which appeared to be natural to 
him. He was not a handsome man ; his cheeks 
were too hollow, his cheek-bones too high, and 
his large, black eyes too deeply set for that — and 
there was over all an expression as if mental or 
physical suffering had put its mark there, but his 

( 93 ) 


94 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


face gave indication of more than ordinary intel- 
lectuality. 

Though we had traveled up from town on the 
same train, and had been driven over, from the 
railway station in the same stage-coach, of which 
we were the only passengers, each had been igno- 
rant of the fact that the other was like himself a 
representative of a great metropolitan daily, and 
engaged on the same mission, and we had not ex- 
changed a word. We had never before in the 
course of our journalistic experience been thrown 
together, probably owing to the fact, which I after- 
ward learned, that Wynkoop had hut recently 
come East, his knowledge of newspaper work hav- 
ing been gained in that great field of progressive 
journalism — the West. 

The dignitary w^ho combined in his burly person 
at once the offices of bar-tender and room clerk, 
turned the register around after we had placed our 
names there, and, while the ink dried upon the 
page, spelled out what we had written. Having 
grasped the fact that we were newspaper men, he 
gazed at us as though we were some sort of moral 
freaks, and an expression that might have meant 
either awe or admiration settled down upon his 
weather-beaten features, as, with his forearms rest- 
ing upon the bar, he surveyed first Wynkoop and 
then myself. 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


95 


“ ’Spose you’ve come up from town to see the 
bangin’ to-morrow !” he ventured at length. 

We signified that such was the case, and I added, 
that we should be glad if he could accommodate 
us with rooms. 

Well, you see,” he said in a peculiar drawl 
that is a distinctive feature of the dialect in that 
section of the State, ‘‘ we’re just a bit crowded : 
The fact is, we’ve only got one room left in the 
house, and the best I can do for you is to give you 
that.” 

Wynkoop objected. 

“ I’m afraid,” he said, as he picked up his 
satchel which he had placed on the bar, ‘‘ that I 
cannot enter into any such arrangement. Not 
that 1 should in the least object to you as a room- 
mate,” he added, in a tone of apology, turning to 
me, ‘‘ but for your own sake I’d rather that we had 
separate rooms.” 

“ But he can’t give them to us,” I urged, won- 
dering all the while what he could possibly mean 
by not wishing to room with me ‘‘ for my owm 
sake.” 

“ Then I shall have to go elsewhere,” he deci- 
ded. 

‘‘ There’s nowhere else for you to go,” chimed 
in the man from behind the bar, “ there’s not an- 
other hotel in Berryville.” 

9 * 


96 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


“ Can’t you put a cot in the bar-room here ?” 
Wynkoop suggested. 

“ If I had a cot, I’d be glad to do it,” was the 
response, but the bangin’ to-morrow has jammed 
the house right up chock-a-block, and every cot’s 
engaged. The room I’m offerin’ you was reserved 
for the deputy Sheriff, who comes from Creek- 
town, and who afterwards decided to stop with the 
Sheriff, or I shouldn’t have that. I’ve given up 
my own room and am goin’ to make a bunk of 
the bar here myself.” 

^Wynkoop hesitated a moment. He gazed 
across the high wooden counter and seemingly fixed 
his eyes on the glasses that decorated the shelf 
behind it, while he pondered over the situation. 

“ And there is but one bed in this room you 
speak of? ” he said at length, questioningly. 

‘‘ Yes, sir ! ” 

“01 dare say we can arrange things,” I said 
to him, “ Come, let’s have a look at the place.” 

Wynkoop yielded at length, and we were shown 
to the apartment which had been reserved for the 
sheriff’s deputy. 

It was a narrow, cheerless room, with a high- 
post bedstead in one end, with a window, bare of 
any pretense of shade or curtain, directly over it. 
At the other end was a wash-stand, and midway 
between the two, on either side, were a couple of 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


97 


green-painted chairs. Our guide set his candle 
down on the wash-stand and awaited further objec- 
tion from the representative of The Times. Ko 
objection, however, was forthcoming. 

“We will make the best of it,” he said, “I 
dare saj we can put in one night together.” 

“ I have no doubt of it,” I replied, though I 
was not a little nettled at his previous pronounced 
opposition to the arrangement. Did he imagine 
from my appearance that I was a thief or cut- 
throat who meant to rob or murder him while he 
slept ? Surely he insinuated as much. 

Then he consulted me as to the hour at which we 
had better be awakened. We decided that as the 
execution was to take place at ten, in order to 
give ourselves ample time, we had better be called 
at eight, and the burly clerk was so instructed. 
Was there anything we would like? Had we 
matches and soap and towels? Yes, we were 
well-provided for in these respects, hut Wynkoop 
said he would be obliged if he could have a pitcher 
of ice water and some glasses. 

When we were alone together he opened his 
satchel and took out a flask and some cigars. 
Then we drew our chairs up within the circle of 
the candle’s light and in a little while were wooing 
the sociability to which an indulgence in a little 
good whiskey and tobacco almost invariably 


98 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


tends. Each had many odd incidents of jour- 
nalistic experience to relate, and, as a matter of 
course, our conversation included a resume of the 
executions we had witnessed. From these the 
rather thread-bare question of repentence within 
the shadow of the gallows, whether real or im- 
aginary, came up. At that time I was somewhat 
of an agnostic, and I was inclined to ridicule the 
idea that a murderer who, throughout his lite had 
been defying the moral laws, could, when brought 
to face death, wipe out all his past, and spring at 
one leap into Abraham’s bosom. 

‘‘ God is all poweful ?” said Wynkoop and he 
spoke so reverently, and with such feeling that I 
determined to test further his belief. 

“If there be a God?” I suggested. 

He looked at me sharply, and I knew at once 
that I had touched a sensitive chord. His dark 
eyes twinkled excitedly in theii: deep recesses. 

“ You doubt God’s existence ?” he asked. 

“ I didn’t say so,” I replied, “ but there are many 
who do.” 

“ And there are many who make a terrible — 
yes fatal, mistake,” he went On. “ There is a God 
— a Gpd whose power you cannot in the least 
comprehend. The same God who wrought mira- 
cles in Galilee and Judea eighteen hundred years 
ago, and who is even now doing just as wondrous 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


99 


things. My dear- Mr. Holt, the day of miracles 
is not past. 

‘‘ Twelve months ago,” he went on, I was an 
atheist. To-day I am positive — absolutely cer- 
tain, not only that there is a God, but that there 
is a God more powerful than you can conceive of.” 

He was so terribly in earnest that to dispute 
the question with him would have been madness. 
I merely asked him the reason for this now fixed 
'belief. 

“ Ah ! you are asking me now what I cannot 
tell you,” he said, ‘‘ hut I know it.” 

“Will you tell me,” I went on, — now that we 
were better acquainted I ventured to ask what I 
did not dare to before — “ Why you so objected to 
occupying this room with me ?” 

He started, but recovered himself almost in- 
stantly. 

“ Certainly,” he replied, “J meant to have told 
you before. I am a somnambulist, and I feared 
that I might disturb you by prowling about the 
room when you wished to sleep.” 

At this moment there was a knock at the door, 
and, before either of us could answer it, a little 
fellow, whom I recognized at once as Miles 
O’Reilly, of the Herald, had burst into 'the room, 
and, in his impulsive Irish style was telling us how 
glad he was to find that friends had arrived in “ the 


100 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


forest primeval ’’ to which he likened the town of 
Berryville. He had seen our names on the regis- 
ter and had come up without delay to welcome us 
to “ the home of the Druids.” He had been shak- 
ing me vigorously by the hand as he said this, 
and now he turned to Wynkoop, who with his 
chair tilted back against the wall, and his hands in 
his trousers pockets, sat pulling energetically at 
his cigar and sending up clouds of smoke that en- 
veloped him in a blue haze. 

“ I’m glad to see you, Wynkoop,” he said, ex- 
tending his hand, “ its the first time I’ve laid eyes 
on you since the Chicago convention.” 

For an instant I saw that Wynkoop hesitated 
about taking the hand that was ofifered, and in 
that instant a flood of thoughts dashed through 
my mind, as thoughts will do at times — thoughts 
that it would take several minutes to put into words. 
Was there a coldness between the men? Had 
there been some misunderstanding on Wynkoop’s 
part of some action of O’Reilly’s ? Had O’Reilly 
done something that Wynkoop deemed dis- 
honorable? All these and more w ent scurrying 
through my brain in less than a heart-beat. 
Then I saw that Wjmkoop was leaning forward 
and was reaching out his left hand to O’Reilly. 

‘^Excuse my left hand, old man!” he was 
saying, “ but I cut the little finger of my right 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


101 


this morning. It’s very painful, and I’m afraid 
to trust it with you.” 

His right hand was still in his pocket. How 
strange ! I thought. Hot ten minutes ago I had 
been looking at that right hand attentively. For 
some reason, I know not what, my eyes had been 
drawn to it. All the time it was exposed, and it 
had been exposed frequently since our meeting, 
my gaze had at intervals been riveted upon it. I 
had noticed that it was very white — unaturally 
white, it seemed to me — that it was very thin, 
and that the nails of the long tapering bony 
fingers were livid. How odd, I thought, that I 
did not notice the cut. Had it been there I must 
surely have observed it. 

“ That hand of yours is in hard luck, Wynkoop,” 
O’Reilly replied, I remember at the Chicago 
convention you had a boil on it or something. 
How the deuce do you write ?” • 

Wynkoop seemed rather nettled at this remark. 

“I manage it,” he said shortly. ‘‘Won’t you 
have a cigar? And I think you’ll find something 
left ill that fiask if you don’t mind using one of 
those glasses — or stop. I’ll ring for an fiber.” 

“ Ring ! ” exclaimed O’Reilly, with a laugh, 
“ Hot much ring. Ho you imagine you are at the 
Hoffman or the Windsor ? Electric bells are un- 
known in Berryville.” 


102 


A MODEBN MIRACLE. 


< Then he helped himself to the flask’s contents, 
lighted a cigar, sat down on the chair I had vacated 
and joined in the conversation, which, when I had 
seated myself on the foot of the bed, once more 
took the vein of journalistic reminiscence. It 
was well on to two o’clock in the morning before 
O’Eeilly left us, and after that we were not long 
in getting between the sheets. 

How long I had slept I do not know. It may 
have been an hour, it may have been more. To 
look at my watch, the flrst impulse usually upon 
awaking at dead of night, never once occurred to 
me, probably for the reason that an over-powering 
sense of horror possessed my whole being. I 
awoke suddenly, with a start. I was trembling 
from head to foot with a chill that seemed to 
threaten the rending of soul and body. Upon my 
breast lay something cold as ice, and my heart 
was growing numb under its chilling weight. For 
an instant I lay quite still trying to gather my 
scattered senses. My memory for the moment 
had deserted me. Where was I ? I stretched my 
eyes open in an efibrt to prove to my own satis- 
faction that I was wide awake. Then it all came 
back to me with a rush. I was at Berryville and 
a strange man, whom I had never seen before that 
night, was my bed-fellow. The room was so dark 
that I could distinguish nothing, but with the re- 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


103 


turning memory came also the same acute sensi- 
bility that told me that it was an icy hand that lay 
upon me. I could feel the long, bony fingers 
pressing into my fiesh with a chilling clutch. 
jN’ever in my life had I experienced a sensation so 
horrible. For another minute — a minute that 
seemed like an eternity — I lay there unable to 
move. Then I gathered all my resolution and en- 
ergy, and rose upon my elbow, but that icy hand 
still grasped the muscles of my breast in a grip 
that was death-like in its firmness. To bring my- 
self to take hold of it and throw it from me, I 
could not. 

As I lifted my head from the pillow the, moon 
came out for a moment from under a cloud, and 
sent a stream of cold, blue light in through the 
shadeless window, revealing — 0, God ! Even now 
the recollection of the ghastly sight chills my 
blood and thrills me with horror as I write ! — that 
I was in bed with a dead man. There beside me, 
lying upon his left side, with his right arm 
stretched over me, his right hand grasping me in 
its death clutch, lay Clement Wynkoop, to all ap- 
pearances as lifeless as any corpse I ever saw. The 
fiood of moonlight fell full upon his face. His 
deep-set eyes were wide open, staring and glassy ; 
his jaw had dropped, and the pallor of death was 
upon every feature. I gazed spell-bound for a 
10 


104 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


moment, and then a heavy cloud floated over the 
moon and that horrible sight was lost in the dark- 
ness which once more enveloped everything. 

I am not naturally a nervous man, but so sud- 
den was the shock in this case that I trembled as 
though stricken with ague. With a terriflc efibrt I 
sat up, and, as I did so, the hand, which had still 
been clinging to me, lost its hold, and I heard the 
body roll over on its back with a ghastly sound 
that set my heart beating even faster than before. 
Recovering myself as best I could, I crawled over 
the dead man and stood upon the floor. Then I 
staggered to the washstand, and with trembling 
Angers found a match, struck it and lighted a can- 
dle. Its feeble, flickering light only added to the 
uncanniness of the scene. 

For a time I could not gain sufiicient courage 
to go back and look at the dead man, but at length 
by dint of active reasoning — that after all death 
was only death in no matter what guise it came — . 
I took up the light and returned to the bed. As 
I thought, the body lay upon its back. I raised 
the candle and looked at the face. 

Was I mad or dreaming? 

Bewilderment in a moment had taken the place 
of fear. There lay my bed-fellow, his eyes and 
mouth closed, breathing regularly and sleeping 
apparently as peacefully as the most healthy of in- 


A MODEEN MIEACLE. 


105 


fants. There was not the slightest indication of 
death anywhere about him. In one sense of the 
word, it was a relief, and in another it was not. 
That I had seen him dead five minutes before was, 
in my mind, not open to dispute. I was satisfied 
that I could not have dreamed it, and I was equally 
satisfied that it was not imagination. Even yet I 
could feel the pressure of that dead hand upon my 
breast. 

Ah ! I said to myself, I will touch that hand and 
see whether it is naturally warm, or whether it is 
still cold and deathlike. It still lay across his 
own breast, where it had dropped when its hold 
upon me had relaxed. I reached out to take it, 
when the sleeping man moved. I stepped back, 
fearing that- he would awaken. He did not, how- 
ever^ and I returned, still intent upon investiga- 
ting the phenomenon that ha.d so distressed me, 
only to find that the hand that I wished to touch 
had been placed beneath the cover, and to get at 
it without disturbing the sleeper was impossible. 

After the experience I had just gone through I 
could not make up my mind to go to bed again. I 
accordingly dressed myself and taking an old 
newspaper from my pocket, I sat down by the 
washstand, and read it through from the first 
column to last, advertisements and all, stopping 
every now and then to wonder over the dead face 


106 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


I had seen and the dead clutch I had felt. When 
the gray light of early dawn made sickly the yel- 
low light of the second candle I had burned, I was 
still far from the solution of the mystery, nor did 
Wynkoop himself do anything towards solving it, 
when, upon his waking, I told him, in somewhat 
modified terms, of the fright I had. At first he 
seemed startled and then distressed, but finally 
regained his composure. 

‘‘It was the- prospect of seeing a triple execu- 
tion-,’’ he said, as he stooped down to see to part 
his hair in the all-awry looking-glass which hung 
too low for him. “You are not up to it 1 am 
afraid. You were dreaming. Holt, dreaming — 
that was it. As the modest old lady remarked, 
you, had the nighthorse.” 

Six months went by. For me they flew along 
rapidly. My occupation was congenial, my pay 
w^as reasonably good, I was contented and happy. 
I seldom met Wynkoop, but I heard of him now 
and then doing excellent w^ork, and, according to 
all reports, making a mark for himself. He was 
soon to publish a novel, some one told me, and it 
promised to be a book that w^ould make a hit 
because of its originality. That was all anyone 
knew. As for the subject and the title they were 
both a profound secret. 

I was sitting in the office one bright May after- 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


107 


noon, when some one brought in the news of 
what was said to be a suicide at one of the 
uptown hotels. The city editor assigned me to 
the task of ‘‘ working it up ” — by which he meant 
not only to describe how the deed was planned 
and carried out, but to ‘‘ get down to,” or in other 
words, discover the cause of it. I took the elevated 
road and fifteen minutes from the time I left the 
office I was standing before the desk of the hotel 
in which the tragedy had occurred. There was 
no indication of anything unusual. Guests were 
coming and going ; the whirl and bustle of busy 
Broadway made hubbub without; the buzz and 
hum of many voices in conversation, discussion 
and chat made things lively within. 'No one 
seemed to know or care that some poor unfortunate 
had put an end to an existence of which he had 
grown inconsolably weary. E’ow and again the mar- 
ble-floored corridor rang with laughter — laughter 
that set my nerves jangling discordantly. I was not 
naturally nervous and this disturbance was un- 
usual. I could not account for it. To investigate 
a suicide was nothing new or strange for a reporter 
of my experience. I had written up a hundred 
if I had written up one, and never before, even in 
my first efibrts in this line, had I felt this strange 
grewsome excitement. 

Behind the desk was a clerk whom I had 
10 * 


108 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


frequently met in a professional way, and, as I 
approached, he greeted me in a manner half 
serious, half jocular. 

‘‘ Ah ! Mr. Holt,” he said ‘‘ I am glad to see you. 
The very man we wanted. I think you will be 
able to solve the mystery.” 

A thrill went through me as he spoke and 1 
feared that I would betray by look or word the 
nervousness which I felt. 

“ The mystery,” I repeated — and my voice 
sounded unnatural to me — Is there a mystery 
about it ?” 

‘‘Yes. We are not just sure whether it was a 
suicide or not. The circumstances surrounding 
the case are very odd and there are no means of 
identifying the dead man, except through you.” 

“ Through me !” I exclaimed. 

“ Exactly; through you !” 

“ But my dear fellow,” I expostulated, “ do 
you suppose because I know you and a good 
many hundred others in Hew York City and 
elsewhere, that I know every man who chooses to 
cut hi^ throat or to have his throat cut in your 
hotel ?” 

“ 0 not at all,” was the reply, “ but in this case 
the dead man left a sealed packet of papers 
addressed to you.” 

Addressed to me ! If I was nervous before I 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


109 


was more so now. In an instant I had thought 
of a dozen men of mj acquaintance whom I 
believed possibly capable of such an action. 

‘‘ Let me see the body,” was all I said. 

It was but a step to the elevator ; and the elevator 
was not long in landing us on the second floor. 
We stopped before Eoom IIo. 323. My com- 
panion inserted a key in the lock, turned it, and 
opened the door. The warm May sunlight was 
streaming in at the windows. There was certainly 
nothing deathlike in the surroundings, nor did a 
hasty glance reveal any sign of the dead body. 
The room was one of the most richly furnished 
in the hotel. It faced Broadway, and connected 
with it were a bath room and bed room, this being 
the parlor of a suite of three apartments. 

On the hearth of the open fire-place lay a mass 
of burnt paper, crisp and black. A large arm- 
chair with its back to the door stood beside a 
table in the centre of the room. Upon the table 
were a champagne bottle and an empty glass, a tall 
dish of fruit, some writing materials and two or 
three books. All this I saw in an instant. 

But the body ?” I asked, “ Where is it ?” 

The clerk led me further into the room, and I 
at once imagined he meant to take me into the 
chamber beyond. In an instant, however, this 
idea was dissipated. As I approached the chair 


110 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


by the table I saw that it was occupied, and the 
next moment I was gazing at the dead body of a 
man, which I recognized at a glance. 

It was that of Clement Wynkoop. 

At first I could scarcely believe that he was not 
living and breathing. He looked so natural, sit- 
ting there with his head thrown back, a faint fiush 
on his usually, pale cheeks, and his lips just parted 
as though he were going to speak. On his lap lay 
an open book. His left hand was holding it 
tightly, and the index finger of his right hand 
pointed to a passage midway down the page. 

“ That is the way we found him !” said the clerk, 
as together we stood gazing at the figure that 
seemed so life-like and yet which was so cold in 
death. ‘‘We have not disturbed a thing. We 
called in a physician who pronounced the body 
quite dead, and advised us not to move it until 
the coroner arrived. For his part, he said, he 
thought it was a case of heart disease. There is 
the packet on the table addressed to you, Mr. 
Holt, perhaps that will give us a clue.’’ 

I took it up. It was carefully sealed and neatly 
addressed in Wynkoop’s small, cramped hand. 

“ I will take this with me,” I said. 

“ Will you not open it here ?” asked the clerk. 

“Ho,” I replied, “I would rather not. You 
can give my address to the coroner, and I will 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


Ill 


produce the papers at the inquest if they throw 
any light on the case.” 

“ But you recognize the dead man ?” 

“ Oh, perfectly. He was connected with The 
Times. His name, is Wynkoop — Clement Wyn- 
koop.” 

“ He registered as Winfield Clement,” said the 
clerk. 

When did he come ?” 

Last night, about eleven o’clock. He wanted 
the finest suite of rooms we could give him, and 
paid a day’s hoard in advance. On going to his 
room he ordered champagne and a box of cigars. 
Then he wanted some fruit, and finally, of all 
things, he wanted a Bible. It must have been 
three o’clock this morning when he wanted the 
Bible. As he did not come down at noon, the 
chambermaid rapped at his door, hut could get no 
answer. She entered by a pass key, and found 
him sitting there, just as you see him, stone-dead, 
with the Bible in his hands.” 

I bent over and read the passage to which his 
finger- pointed. These were the words: ‘‘Ven- 
geance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord.” 
That sense of superstitious fear or nervousness 
which had seized me as I entered the hotel, again 
took possession of me, and with it came hack in 
all the vividness of reality the episode of the night 


112 


A MODEKN MIRACLE. 


on which I first met Wynkoop at Berry ville six 
months before. Again I seemed to feel the awful 
clutch of that icy hand; again I seemed to see 
the ghastly face with its staring eye-balls, and its 
hanging jaw. How much more like a dead man 
he looked then than now ! Was it possible that 
this death too was a sham, a dream, an illusion like 
the other? After my experience of that night I 
should not have been surprised. It was not 
however. Wynkoop was dead this time beyond 
the shadow of a doubt. A post mortem established 
that fact, though it failed to establish what my 
testimony at the inquest did — that it was a case 
of suicide and not heart disease. How did I 
know it? By the papers that were in that packet 
and which, — partly by my influence as, a journal- 
ist and partly out of respect for poor Wynkoop, 
who, though never very popular with the craft, 
was still recognized as a clever fellow in his w^ay 
and entitled to have his last wish gratified — were 
not then published. His wish was that the facts 
contained in the packet should not be made 
known to the public under two years from the 
day of his death. Seven years have now slipped 
away and it is for that reason that I feel at liberty 
to tell what I have, and to give word for word 
the letter and the extracts from Wynkoop’s 
journal which were contained in that bundle of 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


IIB 


papers left in mj care by the man who had grown 
world-weary before reaching his prime. 

* >[: Hi * • 

The letter was dated midnight. 

I do not know why I should have selected 
you,” it began, “ as the man to whom to commit, 
before I go hence, the secret which for the last 
year and a half I have carried as the Spartan 
youth carried the wolf. I am impelled by an 
indescribable something that tells me I cannot 
die until I have made a full and free confession to 
man as well as to God of my crime and punish- 
ment. And with the impulse to write comes 
also the impulse to address that confession to you. 
This must be my apology. Perhaps the fact that 
you already know something of my affliction — for 
you will remember it when I recall certain inci- 
dents of our first meeting at Berryville six months 
ago — has had somewhat to do with my selection of 
a legatee. I beg of }'ou do not make public the 
facts of my sin and my suffering until two years 
from to-night. By that time my faults will, 
perhaps, in a measure be forgotten, and men will 
be apt to think more kindly of me and give me 
a larger share of their sympathy than if the story 
were given when my shortcomings and idiosyn- 
crasies were fresh in their memories to mitigate 
the pathos of the tale. Some day I wish you to 


ii4 


A MODERN MIRACLE 


tell it. I wish it told because possibly it may 
save others from a fate as horrible as mine. 

In a few hours I shall have passed the veil 
which hides the other world from this. You will 
find me here sitting in this chair, and the news- 
papers — ^yours and mine and the others — will record 
another suicide. People will want to know why 
I died. Tell them because of physical suffering 
which had grown unbearable — that will look well 
in print. That is all that the Coroner’s jury need 
know for the purpose of a verdict. 

I have resolved that my last hour shall be a 
bright one. I do not want to go out of my misery 
in gloom and darkness. My life has been gloomy 
and dark enough, God knows. Its last moments 
shall be as bright as I can make them. I have 
chosen and paid liberally for the best room in the 
hotel, I have lighted every gas jet in the apart- 
ment. I have fruit before me of which I shall 
eat before I die. I have wine, too, and wdth the 
wine I shall drink my release; I have it here 
before me as I write : a little phial containing a 
dozen drops or less of Scheele’s hydrocianic acid. 
It is an easy death, they say. My heart-beats 
will grow slower and slower; more feeble and 
and more feeble until they have ceased altogether, 
and I shall have passed away from all the toil and 
weariness, the regret, the mortification and the 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


115 


agony of this life into the— What? A few 
hours will tell. Speculation is vain. Before I go 
I shall burn every paper I possess — every trace of 
my past life will be gone except what is contained 
in the pages from my journal that I shall select 
and leave in a packet with this letter for you. 
Don’t judge me too harshly. Think of me kindly 
sometimes. I have thrown open- the windows 
and raised the shades to the top. I feel the cool 
midnight air fanning my face for the last time. 
In an hour all will be over.” 

The letter broke off thus. There was no 
formal ending, just as there had been no formal 
beginning. 

The enclosed extracts from the journal were as 
follow^: 

Chicago^ December 26, 1879. — Hard work yes- 
terday attending Christmas celebrations. When 
it was all over Potter, Stevenson, I and some others 
spent the rest of the night at Gibbons’ place. 
Metaphysics and religion the subjects of conver- 
sation. As usual I laughed at the idea of celebra- 
ting the birth of a humbug. Poor little Potter is 
a superstitious little fool with reverence largely 
developed. He was horror-stricken at the way 
I talked, and I rather believe he thought I was 
boasting, but I was not. I offered to bet him a 
month’s pay he could not prove that there was 
any reality in the God he believed in. 

11 


116 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


“ Prove to me there is not a God,” he said. 

“ Your God is all powerful, is he not ?” 1 asked. 

To be sure,” he replied. 

“ If Lie be all powerful,” I added, let Him 
strike me dead, I defy Him !” 

Little Potter turned pale at what he termed 
my “damnable blasphemy.” I laughed at him, 
for there was no sign of that alleged All-power- 
ful Being’s existence. I still stood erect and 
smiling. Potter said his God would not deign to 
notice such a threat. My challenge was beneath 
the consideration of the Supreme Ruler. Did I 
think I could call down His visible wrath at my 
own sweet will ? It was presumption. Poor little 
Potter ! 

January 1, 1880. — A week has passed during 
which time I have not had the courage to write. 
Even now I do not know how to tell the story. < 
I am ashamed to confess it. Am I paralyzed or 
am I dying by inches? Can it be that there is a 
God, and that He heard my threat? I despise 
myself for being so weak as to believe it; and 
yet I am undergoing an experience that is as 
horrible as it is unusual. On the morning follow- 
ing the night of m v boast before the hoys at Gib- 
bons’, I awoke with a strange pricking sensation 
in my right arm, as if the circulation had been 


A MODEKN MIRACLE. 


117 


stopped and had suddenly started again. The 
next morning my arm was numb. The circulation 
had apparently stopped and had not gone on 
again, l^or has it since been resumed. My arm 
and hand have grown colder and colder and both 
are a deathly gray white, like the arm and hand 
of a dead man, while my finger nails are livid. 
Curiously enough though, there is no sign of 
decomposition, and my hand still retains its power. 
Though all feeling is gone I can grasp my pencil 
tightly in my fingers and I can write as well as 
ever. Where will all this end ? This is the ques- 
tion. There is something hideously unnatural 
about it, and I am afraid for that reason to con- 
sult a physician. I have rubbed that arm and 
hand until the skin has peeled off and yet there 
has not been the slightest sensation nor the faintest 
sign of circulation. From shoulder to finger tips 
) it is dead, dead, DEAD. 

January 6. — Heaven help me, or I shall go mad ! 
When I wrote before I had no idea of the horror 
of this thing that has seized upon me ! That it is 
the curse of a God or a devil I have no longer 
the slighest doubt. Ever since my hand grew so 
marvelously cold I have refrained from shaking 
hands with any one for fear the unnaturalness of 
it would be remarked and I should be questioned. 


118 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


To-day my old uncle from St. Louis called at the 
office to see me ; I had not met him for a month of 
Sundays, and, as he was always a favorite uncle 
of mine, I had grasped his hand before I thought 
what I was doing. He sprang back wdth a cry 
that sent a thrill through me. The utmost horror 
was pictured in every feature. I dropped the 
hand I was holding, but it was some minutes be- 
fore he could recover himself enough to speak. 
Then he told me of the strange thing he had 
seen. As I took his hand, he said, and he felt its 
icy pressure, my face suddenly became the face 
of a dead man. My eyes stared glassily and my 
skin looked bloodless and cold, while my parted 
lips were purple. 

‘‘ I could have sworn death had suddenly come 
to you as you stood there,’’ he said. “ 0, my boy, 
you cannot imagine what a shock you gave me ! ” 

Ah ! yes. I know it now, that same vision will 
haunt everyone whom I touch. I am a leper. 
The time must come when men wdll flee from me 
as they would from a plague. After all there is 
a God — a terrible, awful God — all-powerful, all- 
hearing, all-seeing. Have I not proof of it? Is 
not this God’s recompense ? 

March 18. — My affiiction grows worse and 
worse. I have been thinking about having my 
arm amputated at the shoulder, but should I do 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


119 


80 , the surgeon would discover my secret, and I 
can never bring myself to reveal that to living 
man. i^o, I must suffer on, sometimes I think 
death would be welcome, and yet I am too much 
of a coward to hid it come. There is a God, and 
there is a hereafter. May not the hereafter be 
worse even than this living death ? I am not will- 
ing to take the risk. 

June 4.- — Chicago is full of newspaper men and 
politicians. Half the latter are drunk and insist 
on shaking hands. When they shake with me 
they see a ghost. It is a ghastly trick to play 
them, but it is their own fault. 

October 5. — I am going East. There is a sus-. 
picion here that there is a mysterj^ about me, and 
I cannot abide it. If any man should discover 
my secret and make it public, I think I would 
kill him. 

New York^ November 11. — I met a man at Berry- 
ville yesterday named Holt. He is on the Tribune. 
Had to sleep, with him because hotel was crowded. 
During the night my hand fell upon him and 
awoke him, and the usual result followed. I 
turned it off in the morning by telling him he had 
been dreaming. If he had insisted that it was 
not a dream, and had guessed the truth, God 
knows what I would have done. 


11 * 


120 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


December 26. — Just a year has passed since I 
was stricken with this living death. It seems like 
a century. And now the worst is coming. 0, 
God is this just? I reported a Christmas sermon 
yesterday, the burden of which was that there is 
forgiveness for all who ask it. Christ was born to 
save the worst of us. And yet I cannot ask it. 
This is a part of my punishment. Is it that I have 
committed the unpardonable sin ? The thought 
drives me mad ! Will relief never come ? 

January 1, 1881. — I have been making New 
Year’s calls, with my arm in a sling. I was com- 
pelled to resort to that as a means of avoiding 
shaking hands with my right hand. Cartwright, 
of the Post^ who is a literary chap and somewhat 
of a society man, wanted me to join him in his 
New Year’s calling, and to oblige him, and for the 
sake of diversion I did so. Perhaps it is the most 
unfortunate step I have ever taken. At one house 
I met a most charming little woman, as pretty as 
a picture and as gentle as a tame dove. Margaret 
Willoughby she is called.. We had the pleas- 
antest of pleasant chats, and when I left her she 
invited me to call again. Shall I go ? My reason 
bids me not to ; my heart tells me I cannot keep 
away. 

January 21. — I have seen Miss Willoughby 
again. I met her at the theatre, and she asked 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


121 


me why I had not called. I must go. Surely 
there can he no harm in admiring her and spend- 
ing a pleasant hour in her company. 

March 15. — Margaret grows more and more 
charming. I have begun to write a romance in 
which she will be the heroine, and a man afflicted 
as I am the hero. It will be a strange story surely. 
When it is finished I will read it to her. I think 
she is fond of me. Indeed I am sure of it. My 
romance shall be my proposal. If she is willing 
to accept me knowing what I am, I shall be happy. 

April 13. — I am less miserable than at any time 
since God’s curse fell upon me. I may be happy 
yet, — who knows ? With her as my wife, I should 
not mind this dead thing so much. From a few 
words she unconsciously let fall to-night I know 
that she loves me. And I,—. Heaven knows 
how I love her ! My romance is approaching 
completion. I have worked hard at it, neglecting 
everything else, and in a week I shall have finished 
it. Can it be possible that a great joy awaits me ? 
I am afraid to hope, yet cannot help it. 

April 22. — The romance is written. Hot an 
hour ago I put the word ‘‘ Finis ” on the last page. 
To-morrow I will read it to her. Oh, Margaret, 
my beloved, you will not fail me ! lam sure of it ! 

April 26. — Hard work at the office prevented 


122 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


my seeing Margaret until this afternoon, when I 
read the romance to its close. When I looked at 
her there were tears in her eyes. 

‘‘ I do not wonder she loved him,” she said. 

“ He had suffered so much, and he loved her so 
fondly.” 

“ And would you love me so if I had suffered , 
so much and loved you so fondly ?” I asked. 

It is to be wondered at that I am happy? 
Have I not held her to my breast? Have I not 
kissed her lips? Has she not told me that she is 
mine forever, that nothing under Heaven can 
part us ? I will strap that dead arm to my side 
and forget that it exists. I will learn to use my 
left hand altogether. I have been practicing with 
it of late, and I shall soon be able to do without 
my right, well enough. 

May 10. — The darkness of midnight has come 
at noonday. The cup of joy has been dashed 
from the lips that had but touched its contents. 
God’s wrath is greater than I dreamed. His 
punishment more than I can bear. 0 Heaven, 
that I should have to bear this! My brain is 
aflame. My conscience is prodding me with sharp 
sticks. Death, no matter what it brings, cannot 
be worse than this living hell. To find happi- 
ness but to lose it is the worst torment. How it 
came about I know not. I was so sure that hand 


A MODERN MIRACLE. 


123 


of mine should never touch her, and yet, 0 God, 
it was Thy vengeance that directed it — its icy clasp 
against my will fell upon the soft whiteness of her 
rounded arm. She shrank from me, gazed at me 
for a second, and then fell back with a piercing 
cry — a cry such as I never heard before, and such 
as I pray Heaven never to hear again — a cry in 
which all the awful horror of the sight before her 
seemed to echo and re-echo — a cry that tore my 
heart to shreds and filled me with the very agony 
of despair. "Wlien she recovered from her faint, 
her reason had fled. She was raving mad. To 
touch her sent her into a paroxysm of fear. The 
mere sight of me — I who loved her so much, 
who would have given my life for her a hundred 
times over, who would have gone through fire 
and flood rather than the least harm should have 
come to her — was the signal for shrieks of the 
wildest alarm. I cannot write more. The thought 
of it is maddening, the writing of it torture. 

•From that hour to this those shrieks have rung in 
my ears, that look of fear has been before my 
eyes. Eemorse has filled my soul. Sleep has 
fled from me. Another day of this and I should 
be as mad as she. I feel it, I know it. Death alone 
can prevent it. 


A TRAP OF CUPID. 


I was not always a dreamer. 1 can readily 
remember a time when I was wont to ridicule 
those people who believe there are such things as 
God-given messages, sent to you while sleeping, 
that, will bring you good or ill, in accordance 
with how you receive them. I was one of those 
who considered these warnings, hints, suggestions, 
merely ‘‘the children of an idle brain, begot of 
nothing but vain fantasy.” I was in the habit 
of referring to anything seen or heard in my 
sleeping hours as “ only a dream.” All that is 
changed now. I am a dreamer. I am not a 
Spiritualist in the generally accepted sense of 
that term, yet I have a strong and abiding faith 
in a certain force of which we as yet know very* 
little — a force, the power of which seems bound- 
less, which follows no given rule and is utterly 
beyond control. 

The story I am about to relate is, I will admit, 
marvelously strange and seemingly beyond the 
shadow of reality. Had anyone told it to me 
three years ago I should have poohpoohed it as 
124 


A "TRAP OF CtiPlD. 


125 


nonsense. About it there are many things 
which defy explanation. All my attempts to 
investigate them have been futile. It is impossi- 
ble to get to the bottom. Just so far I can go and 
no farther. The lines, clear and firm and sym- 
metrical in the foreground, run off into a mist 
that defies penetration. 

Six years ago I spent a month in the Engadine. 
I had been studying art in Paris during the 
winter and had gone ofiT on a sketching tour 
among the mountains as soon as the laughing 
days of June had followed the smiling days of 
May. Travelling from place to place I found 
myself one evening at a quaint little inn in a 
village called Bergun. I had come down from 
St. Moritz and was on my way back to Paris and 
my studies. Hever had anything I had seen so 
impresssed me, as did the picturesque effects of that 
little bunch of houses on the bank of a rushing liver 
above, which pine-girdled peaks rose into the 
white moonlight. The houses were low and deep- 
roofed, with overhangings eaves and rickety 
balconies, and with windows small and many- 
paned. Firewood was piled beside the doorway 
of each little chalet, and here and there as I 
walked along the dusky, rocky roadway out of 
the town, upon a log of wood or in a heavy, 
clumsy chair sat a b^ery villager enjoying the 


126 


. A TRAP OF CUPID. 


evening and his pipe. I never forgot Bergun, 
and often would I take out the sketches made 
there and gaze on them with rapt interest, while 
I could imagine myself once more in the heart of 
the Alps, beside the rushing river, looked down 
upon by the rocky hills and the high-sailing 
moon. 

Three years had passed — over three years. It 
was in the latter part of November. I was home 
again in dear old Philadelphia. My work had 
been recognized as meritorious, I was a member 
of the National Academy of Design, and I was 
gradually working to gain a place in the front 
rank of landscape painters. I had been painting 
all day, elaborating one of my Engadine sketches. 
It was a picture of a rocky gorge, with a frail 
hand-bridge crossing over a stream which rushed 
in a torrent through the gorge’s narrow confines, 
d had succeeded in getting , a capital moonlight 
effect upon the water, and when I fell asleep it 
was with a satisfied sensation that comes after the 
successful accomplishment of a desired end. 

I had never been given to dreaming. Very 
seldom was my sleep any more than a blank page, 
but on this night “ I dreamed dreams and saw 
visions.” I dreamed as never in my life I had 
dreamed before. I was in Switzerland again — in 
Bergun, with its picturesque houses, its dusty 


A TRAP OF CUPID. 


127 


road, its mountains, its river, and its gorge, but I 
was not alone. It seemed that I had spent a week 
there, and that the week had been passed in the 
society of a family of New York people of the 
better class — intelligent and refined as well as 
wealthy. In that one night I experienced that of 
which in my waking hours I had never had any- 
thing but a very faint idea. I had always scouted 
love as a thing for poets to rave about, as some- 
thing more mythical than real, as something that 
could be cultivated, but that would soon die 
for want of attention. I believed firmly that I 
should never love unless I forced myself to it, 
and that I should be constant only because of a 
continual self- watchfulness and effort in that direc- 
tion. 

In that one night my creed was exploded. I 
loved. The object of my, adoration was the 
younger daughter of the family with which I 
seemed to have spent the pleasant week. She 
was just eighteen ; but she was not to be compared 
for one moment with the chits of girls whom I had 
been accustomed to associate with that age. She 
was a woman, and all that the word woman implies. 
Moreover, she was a beautiful woman ; beautiful 
with a chic, piquant beauty that I have never 
seen, or heard aptly described. She was gentle, 
amiable and loving, and I felt that there was noth- 
ing in the world I would not do for her. 


13 


128 


A TRAP OF CUPID. 


It seemed that I was at the end of my week’s 
sojourn. I must perforce leave on the morrow. 
Together she and I strolled out upon the chalet 
bordered road, past the Swiss householders who 
sat smoking their pipes, up through the dust and 
over the rocks into the gorge, the river foaming 
below us, and the moon flooding all the scene with 
its cool glow. Before us lay the bridge I had 
sketched, and toward it, hand in hand, we made 
our way. At length we stood upon it, gazing 
down upon the phosphorescent glitter of the rush- 
ing waters below. 

I spoke to her. Then and there I told her the 
story of my uncontrollable love for her; then 
and there I asked her to promise me that she 
would be my wife; and she — sensible girl that 
she was — and she never seemed more sensible, 
more true and loving, more womanly than at that 
moment — told me in return, without any mock 
modesty, without any attempt to belittle her 
passion, that my love was returned in all the 
fullness of her young heart’s desire. Would she 
be my wife? Did I know what I was asking? 
Was I quite sure that I loved her as much as I 
said I did? Would my love not waver after 
parting from her? Would it not he better that I 
should wait and see? All this she wanted to 
know. 


A TRAP OP CUPID. 


129 


W e talked it over quite calmly together, though 
our hearts beat fast, and even in the white light 
of the moon I could see the blood mantling her 
cheeks and brow. At length I yielded to her. 
She was right. I had known her so short a time. 
I could wait. She would be home the following 
November. It was then June. I must not see 
her again, I must not write to her, but if, after six 
months, I still loved her as then, I should come to 
her. I should spend Christmas at her father’s 
house in New York. She repeated her address 
to me. It seemed quite familiar. I clasped her 
close in my arms. I leaned down to kiss her. 
I opened my eyes. It was broad daylight. I 
was staring at the canopy which stretched across 
the top of my four-post bedstead. I had been 
dreaming. 

For weeks I tried to banish the dream, but it 
was useless. It was so real, so intensly real, that 
I could not rid myself of the impression it left 
upon me. It was certainly a strange experience. 
I was in love with a woman I had seen only in 
my sleep ; in all probability a woman who never 
existed. Her name and address, however, were 
ever before me; I remembered them quite dis- 
tinctly. 

It was the week before Christmas. Almost a 
month had passed, and I was still filled with along- 


130 


A TRAP OF CUPID. 


ing to see once more the object of my strange vision. 
I prayed that I might dream of her again, but my 
slumber was as blank as a snow-covered plateau. 
As I sat at my desk, thinking, thinking, thinking, 
her image ever before me, her voice still ringing 
in my ears, a sudden impulse seized me ; an 
impulse which had come time and time before, 
but which each time I had put off as unworthy 
the notice of a sensible man. It was to write to 
the address which I so well remembered. It can 
do no harm, I said to myself, I will do it. 

I wrote — wrote as though the dream had been 
a reality — told her that ^my , love had never wa- 
vered, that I longed to see her once more, and 
that, if quite convenient, I would be with her on 
Christmas eve. I sent my regards to her father 
and mother, and mentioned her younger brother, 
who had won my especial esteem because of his 
love for art. After I had posted the letter I 
laughed at my own silliness. How foolish ! I 
said. It will go to the dead letter office. In 
spite of this I hoped against my better judgment 
for an answer. 

Two days later, as I sat down to breakfast at 
my club, a waiter handed me three letters. One 
was a bill ; another was from hTew York, but it bore 
Goupil’s imprint and I knew it was on a business 
matter, and the third^it was a square envelope. 


A TRAP OF CUPID. 


131 


addressed in a scrawling womanly hand, and it 
was postmarked New York. A strange feeling 
came over me — unaccountably strange. There 
was something so unreal, unnatural in it all, 
that the perspiration came out upon my forehead 
in cold drops and my hand trembled so I could 
scarcely open the letter. ^ 

With an effort I commanded myself and broke 
the envelope. Nervously I pulled forth the con- 
tents. I glanced at the signature. It was her 
name. Hastily- 1 looked it through. There was 
no mistaking it. It could not have been written 
by anyone but she. There were incidents referred 
to of 'which my letter had given no hint — inci- 
dents which had occured — so far as I was con- 
cerned — only in a dream. The letter ended with 
a cordial invitation to come at once, and her 
father had added a postscript in which he urged 
me to accept his hospitality. I went, still doubt- 
ing, though the letter was seemingly convincing. 

It was Christmas eve. The streets were alive 
with people ; the shop windows were aglow with 
light. All was merry bustle and activity. 
Everybody seemed to be rushing kere and there, 
jostling each other as they passed. Yet I moved 
among them, made my way through the throng 
as one who was still dreaming. It was all so odd, 
so strange. 


132 


A *iRAP OF CUPID. 


At length the house was reached. I had been 
admitted. I had been ushered into a warm, 
richly furnished reception room, decorated with 
Christmas greens. Upon the hearth a wood-fire 
crackled and flamed. For a moment a great fear 
seized me. Suppose they should not be the 
people ! Suppose they should not recognize me ! 
Suppose it should all prove to have been a 
mistake ! 

For a moment only was I thus tormented. The 
door opened and she stood before me. She, 
whom I loved as I never loved woman before, 
stood there in all the healthful vigor of life, her 
face aglow with welcome, her hands stretched out 
to receive me. A second only and she was in m}^ 
arms. Doubts and fears were flung to the wind. 
She was mine. It was no dream then — of that I 
was certain. It is no dream, now, of that I am 
equally certain. Yet neither my wife nor I have 
ever been able to explain the mystery of our 
meeting in the Engadine. Can you ? 


THE WIZARD’S JAR. 


I. 

Although the sun shone very brightly that 
Fourth of July morning it was by no means as 
warm a day as many that Mr. Harrison Blodgett 
had experienced ; and for this small favor he was 
duly thankful. He was, however, lonely and 
dejected, and the prospect of spending the holiday 
in town was not an alluring one. The cause of 
Mr. Blodgett’s dejection, Avas, that he was in hard 
luck. 

Five months before, while living in a little 
village up the State, he had come into a legacy of 
ten thousand dollars through the death of his 
grand uncle. About the same time he had read 
an advertisement in one of the newspapers, that 
had set him wild with the speculative fever. It 
was enticingly worded, and it promised handsome 
returns in the stock market for small investments. 
He had forwarded a small cheque to the address 
given and in a few weeks he had received word 
that his money was doubled. The letter that 
brought him that news suggested the advisability 

( 133 ) 


134 


THE wizard’s jar. 


of his being on the spot personally to superintend 
his ventures, and he had hastened to town by the 
next train. The old story was only repeating 
itself. He invested heavily, and still rhore heavily, 
and in a little while he was considerably out of 
pocket. As is usual with beginners in stock 
speculation he had confined his operations to the 
bull side of the market, and, when June made its 
farewell bow and July tripped on to the scene, the 
bulk of Mr. Blodgett’s money was fast locked in 
a way that meant ruin for him should he be forced 
into liquidation. At that moment he ^vas living 
from hand to mouth on what he could manage to 
snatch from ten-share “ flyers ” in one or another 
of the bucket shops. 

In view of all this it was not surprising that 
the glorious Fourth found Mr. Blodgett in any- 
thing but holiday spirits. The young man heaved 
several deep sighs as he brushed his auburn locks 
before his cracked mirror, and he sighed again as 
he adjusted a flaring red necktie in place, and 
otherwise prepared to take his departure from the 
room that had grown oppressive to him. 

He strolled into the public park which was just 
opposite his lodging, and seating himself where 
he could watch a group of children at play, he 
had his thoughts distracted for a time from his 
own loneliness and misery by their idle prattle 


THE wizard’s jar. l35 

and romping. The sight of the children, how- 
ever, brought to his mind thoughts of his little 
nephews and nieces at home, and, being a kindly 
young man at heart, he became impressed with 
an idea that he ought to send the little chits some 
presents. Without more ado, therefore, he started 
in quest of a shop to make his purchases. 

Block after block he travelled and in vain looked 
for an open store. Windows were covered by 
wire screens, and doors were fast-barred. He 
had at length about come to the conclusion that 
he would have to postpone his purchase until the 
morrow, when he suddenly stumbled upon what 
appeared to be an old curiosity shop. 

It was a curious, dusty, grimy place with shelves 
running around it, crowded with all manner of 
quaint and beautiful articles, while the floor was 
thickly strewn with larger pieces of quite as 
wonderful appearance. In the midst of all stood 
a little man, with dark curly hair and a hook 
nose that told his visitor quite as plainly as words 
could have done that he was a son of Abraham. 
Mr. Blodgett in looking about for something that 
would make a suitable gift for his sister’s children, 
was attracted by what appeared to him to be an 
oddly-shaped tobacco jar. It was a light blue in 
color, and was decorated with rays of gold diverg- 
ing from a circle in the middle, of one side. The 


136 


THE wizard’s jar. 


lid was peaked, somewhat resembling a cap, and 
upon this the gold rays ran upward. 

The proprietor of the shop declared that the 
rays were real gold, imbedded in the clay, after 
the manner of doissonnt enamel,, and he also ex- 
plained to the would-he purchaser a most curious 
feature in connection with the jar. When it had 
first come into his possession several years before 
— he had secured it, he said, at a sale in London 
of an old East Indian trader’s effects — in the 
centre of the medallion, surrounded by the gold 
rays, was a clearly-defined representation in sil- 
houette of a bull. As years went by this figure 
seemed to have faded out. He had not examined 
it for a long while, he said, but he discovered now 
it w^as completely gone. Yes, he said, it might 
be used for tobacco, but he believed it was 
originally intended to hold coin. It was called 
the Wizard’s Jar because of the lid, which looked 
like a wizard’s cap. 

There vras something about it that pleased Mr. 
Blodgett and he bought it. The price asked took 
all the young man’s spare change, and he accord- 
ingly postponed his purchases for the little ones 
until a more convenient season. 


the wizard’s jar. 


137 


n. 

When Mr. Harrison Blodgett awoke on the 
morning after the Fourth and glanced from his 
place in the centre of the four jposts of his bed 
at the Wizard’s jar which he had placed on the 
mantel shelf, he saw something that was calculated 
to fill him with astonishment. In the centre 
medallion, where yesterday there was nothing but 
pale blue glaze, there now appeared the silhouette 
figure of a sturdy bear of a dark blue color. The 
bear was represented as seated upon its haunches 
and with its fore-paws engaged in pulling down 
some imaginary object. Mr. Blodgett remem- 
bered that the Hebrew had spoken about the figure 
of a bull on the jar in its palmy days, and now 
here was the figure of a bear. It at once struck 
the young man that there was something pecul- 
iarly significant about this, and in a second he 
was out of bed and closely examining his purchase. 
The picture of the bear was as clear and distinct 
as though it had been painted there. He was 
quite sure that there was no optical delusion about 
it, for he looked at it in every light, and the figure 
was always the same. 

Mr. Blodgett w^as short of several stocks in a 
down town bucket-shop, and he determined, tak- 


138 THE WlZARD^S JAR* 

ing this, an omen of good fortune, to stay short, 
nor was he at all regretful when, returning that 
night, he remembered that those stocks had each 
fallen at least five dollars a share. He spent the 
evening by his own fireside and he gave especial 
attention to the Wizard’s Jar. He examined 
every one of the gold rays minutely, and he im- 
agined that in their curls and twists they resem- 
bled a succession of somewhat distorted K’s. The 
bear was still plainly visible too, and he became 
impressed with the idea that the Wizard’s Jar 
was telling him as plainly as it could that he had 
better sell Heading, He had a hundred or more 
shares of that stock in the broker’s office in which 
he dealt, and the books showed that he was out of 
pocket about five dollars a share on his purchase. 
It was well margined, however, and if he sold it 
he would have sufficient free money to go short ” 
quite as much as he was now ‘Hong.” The next 
morning the jar still bore its bear colors and the 
rays still wore their R shape. Mr. Blodgett ac- 
cordingly acted on the impulse which was upon 
him and switched to the bear side of the market. 
In fact he accepted his losses in every stock in 
which he was interested and sold every share of 
Reading he could raise the money to protect. It 
was a great venture, be admitted, but the Wiz- 
ard’s Jar had advised him correctly the day before, 


THE wizard’s jar. 


139 


and he was determined, as he put it, “ to hack his 
luck.” 

The wisdom of this determination was not long 
in being established. Reading stock tumbled and 
and continued to tumble until, before July had 
sped, Mr. Blodgett had quite made up his losses, 
and was in a fair way to make a fortune for him- 
self. About the beginning of August after the 
stock had dropped fully fifteen points, the dark 
blue bear began to fade and the R’s to straighten 
out their twists. Then it was that Mr. Blodgett ■ 
began to buy in to cover his contracts, and before 
the hear had quite vanished from view as it did in 
a few days, he was entirely clear of his short in- 
terest in Reading and had deposited in bank a 
very tidy sum in the way of profits. The stock 
market had been weak now for quite a long period 
under adverse infiuences, and indeed it looked as 
though it might go still lower. Mr. Blodgett, 
nevertheless, did not waver. He followed his jar’s 
advice blindly, and, when the rays began to twist 
themselves into so many L’s and S’s and a picture 
of a bull began gradually to develop itself upon 
the medallion, he lost no time in putting his entire 
capital into Lake Shore. The next day news quite 
unexpected and of an exceedingly favorable na- 
ture came out regarding this one of the Vander- 
bilt specialties and it shot upward like a rocket. 


140 


THE wizard’s jar. 


III. 

The next Fourth -of July found Mr. Blodgett 
fairly rolling in wealth, possessed of hordes of 
friends, and engaged to be married to Miss Hen- 
rietta Smithers, the daughter of an ex-memher of 
Congress, and as charming a girl as ever lived. 

He went to Mr. Smithers’s country seat to 
spend the holiday as a matter of course, and as 
fortune would have it, he was detained there a 
fortnight, being stricken down with a fever on the 
very day he expected to return to town. 

The doctor was called in and commanded that 
he should have absolute quiet and rest, and in 
order to relieve him from any chance of excite- 
ment or worriment over business he was not to 
be permitted even to see a newspaper. In vain 
he pleaded to be allowed to glance at the stock 
quotations, but his nurse, who was none other 
than Miss Henrietta herself, was oburate 'and 
denied him, out of a mistaken sense of her duty, 
even the single look which he implored. 

On leaving the city he had neglected to leave 
any address with his brokers, and when at length 
a newspaper was allowed him, he saw the full effect 
of this neglect. The stocks in which he had 
placed the bulk of his large fortune had gone 
against him. Hitherto he had found that a ten 
per cent, margin was much more than sufficient 


THE wizard’s jar. 


141 


to hold each of his ventures, guided as he was by 
the Jar’s occult divination. He had recently 
bought several thousand shares of Western Union 
and Lackawanna with only that slight protection, 
and the paper which he had searched nervously 
for quotations and which had fallen from his 
trembling grasp at the first sight of the figures, 
had told him not only that his margin had been 
completely wiped out, but that his brokers having 
been unable to protect themselves had failed disas- 
trously, that he was supposed to have fied from 
the city, and that he was stamped in the public 
prints as a swindler and a scoundrel. 

Mr. Blodgett lost no time in getting back to 
town. On his arrival he hastened at once to his 
broker’s office, and endeavored to mend matters 
as best he could. He explained the situation and 
then sought his infiuential friends to obtain loans 
sufficient to make another big venture, which he 
felt confident would soon put him on his feet 
again, his faith in the Wizard’s Jar being still 
unshaken. His friends, however, his prospective 
father-in-law included, who, a fortnight ago, would 
have loaned him any amount, were now very 
wary, and made all manner of excuses, so that Mr. 
Blodgett found he would have to depend entirely 
upon his own resources. He had still about ten 
thousand dollars in bank, and with this he deter- 
mined to make a grand coup. 


142 


THE wizard’s jar. 


He rushed back to his hotel, and hurried to his 
room to interview the Wizard’s Jar, which, since 
his removal into his present luxurious quarters, 
he kept upon a plush-covered pedestal in his 
richly-furnished drawing-room. 

Opening the door, a scene of desolation met his 
gaze and caused his high hopes to drop as a 
plummet. An oil painting had fallen from the 
wall and overturned the pedestal. Upon the 
Smyrna rug on which it had rested, lay shattered 
into ten thousand fragments, the remains of the 
Wizard’s Jar. 


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